VidFire: Become a YouTube Kids' Content Pro

You want to replace your job with a career as a YouTube creator for kids and families. In order to pull that off, you need to know who’s out there succeeding already. There’s lots to learn from watching what works, and there’s even more to learn from analyzing what works with a pro. In this section, we’re going to introduce you to some of the best channels on YouTube for kids and families, and we’ll give you real insight into why they’re succeeding. 

We’ve broken up our introductions to channels so you can skip to the type of channels that most interest you. Our categories are: 

1. Vlogs
2. Music
3. Skits
4. Toys
5. Educational

Links

• Family Fun Pack - Kids 72 Costume Runway Show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkYqMa5YXls
• Family Fun Pack - Creepy Clown Kidnaps Michael: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtRouE-r3J8
• Funnel Vision - Ball Pit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b246b8Ik6xs
• Funnel Vision - If Kids Were In Charge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vag3qHiBQs
• Funnel Vision - Legoland Hotel Grand Opening: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwW_J0vHOk0
• Ellie and Jared - First Spider Bite: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MboH-DDHzc

Family Fun Pack

This is the vlog that first inspired us to start our channels. These guys were very early adopters on YouTube, and this has given them a tremendous advantage over the years. Let’s take a look at their homepage for a second, here. If you look at their “Popular Uploads” playlist here at the top you can see some huge, whopping numbers. 409 million views on that top video? How would you like those kinds of views? 

We want to show you Family Fun Pack because you need to understand that the kids + family space does have some early adopters in it. These are folks who got here first and established communities that have grown to be humongous over time. If you look at some of their earlier videos, they’re not the kinds of videos that would succeed in today’s more competitive, intense kids + family market, but they’ll help you understand how these kinds of videos have evolved over time on YouTube, and where they’re headed. 

So if we want to look at channel evolution, take a look at the thumbnails of their oldest and most successful videos, and then take a look at the thumbnails of their most recent ones. Do you see that difference? The old ones are simply stills from their corresponding videos. The more recent ones are much more produced. They typically have solid color backgrounds, colorful texts, and are built from combinations of photographs, edited into a composite image. In today’s market, your thumbnails will be crucial and we’ll talk about that more in-depth later, but it’s cool to see an example in the wild, here. 

Now, let’s take a look at a more recent successful upload. How about “Creepy Clown Kidnaps Michael,” which was uploaded not too long ago at the making of this video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtRouE-r3J8

Family Fun Pack is also an interesting example because they do lots of different things on their channel: vlogging, skits, etc. This, again, is a trend from another time. Today, you’ll see more specialized, focused channels. 

Funnel Vision

The dad from Funnel Vision has taken his trademark beanie and glasses and a funny voice and turned himself into a character. He’s endlessly energetic on screen, and he and his family are always up to something ridiculous. From a ball pit in the basement (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b246b8Ik6xs) to a video about kids and adults swapping roles (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vag3qHiBQs), these guys don’t pull punches. 

If we take a look at their most successful video view-wise, it’s titled “Legoland Hotel Grand Opening” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwW_J0vHOk0) and it’s got 73 million views. This is a vlog video, with the Funnel Vision family giving you a tour of the Legoland Hotel they’re staying in. That’s a classic vlog move: showing people a top-notch, unusual experience your family is enjoying. This is a particularly good one because it involves a well-known brand and place, and at the time they made this video, the hotel was just opening. 

If you keep watching Funnel Vision’s videos, you’ll see some of the keys to their success: they’re always very energetic on camera, particularly the dad. The kids do it too, always excited to see what crazy stuff their parents have cooked up. Another simple strength is their willingness to try fun, unusual things that kids like. They’re not afraid to go big on these crazy activities. This commitment to entertainment makes them winners time and time again. 

Ellie And Jared

Ellie and Jared run a very different vlog, and the most important difference here is that their vlog is aimed at young parents, not their children. Because their vlog is aimed at adults, you’ll see that their views are a lot fewer than the ones you saw for Family Fun Pack. That’s an important pattern. If you aim at kids, views can be astronomical. If you aim at adults, the views are fewer, but the opportunities for monetization of other kinds can also increase. Let’s take a look at one of Ellie and Jared’s most successful videos and see what we can learn from it. 

“First Spider Bite” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MboH-DDHzc ) has 14 million views and it’s a few years old. Let’s watch it. You’ll notice that a lot of it is Ellie talking to us while stuff happens. This is classic vlogging. No plot, necessarily, just a lot of talking while you follow people around. The central event is their little boy’s trip to the pediatrician for a spider bite, but they take it from there and run. 

In order to really understand what Ellie and Jared do, you can’t just watch one video. You need to see how their daily sharing adds up into patterns of entertainment, fun, and reality television style documentation. One of the really interesting things that they’ve done over time is document their struggle with infertility, which has become a really valuable thing for their community. 

They’ve also established a tradition of sharing fun vacations, which is classic reality television, right? You’re in your office or on your couch at home and you see that these guys are on an island somewhere, snorkeling. That’s real entertainment value. 

A real strength with these guys is their willingness to let you in to crucial moments of their life, and that, I think, is what has carried their channel and fed their audience over the years. 

Links

• Super Simple Songs - The Bath Song + More: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CG8F-6dZk8k
• Chu Chu TV - Johny Johny Yes Papa And Many More Videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHSFpGBFGHY

Super Simple Songs

On subscriber count alone, it’s going to be tough to find a bigger fish in the kids + family space than Super Simple Songs. They specialize in nursery rhymes and original songs for small children, and they do a mix of animated and live action material. These guys are definite early adopters, which gives them a tremendous advantage, and they’ve used it well over the years to build a huge following. 

Let’s watch their “The Bath Song + More” video, which has 304 million views at the making of this video. That’s huge, right? Again, that’s because they’re aiming straight at young kids, who can watch something repetitively and almost obsessively when they like it. The first thing I want you to notice is that this is an almost hour-long video. That’s huge! This used to be a strong trend when this video was uploaded, in 2015. The idea is simple: if you’re attracting very young eyes, don’t make them click or tap more than they need to. Keep them watching your material without making them work for it by building large compilations. These large compilations will also attract parents who have a specific task they need to complete and an idea of how long it will take and how long they want their kids to be watching. 

If we play the video, you’ll see that these guys have a pretty high production value. What I mean by that is that the lighting for these shots is great, the music production is professional, and look at this little puppet. That guy is not homemade. Also, he’s being moved by professionals, who can make him really feel like he’s alive, which is great. This is a Super Simple Songs original song, and you can see how simple they’ve kept it. It’s repetitive and has very little in the form of lyrics. Additionally, it’s sneakily educational, teaching kids some basic body parts. 

Chu Chu TV

Chu Chu TV is another giant in the kids’ songs category. They specialize in animated videos built around well-known nursery thymes. Their animation style is distinct and recognizable, as is their musical style. You’ll see that they organize their videos into huge compilations as well, like Super Simple Songs and other nursery rhymes channels. Let’s take a look at one of their videos. 

We’re watching their “Johnny Johnny Yes Papa And Many More Videos” compilation, which clocks in at over an hour and has 1.2 billion views at the time of this recording. That is astronomical, guys. Absolutely huge. 

You’ll see that the animation style here is quite simple, not very demanding, but very effective. It communicates a simple story very well, in a recognizable and memorable way. The videos themselves are very short, some clocking in under two minutes, but they play  back to back in this compilation and end up adding up to a lot of watch time. 

Links

• Emily Tube - Babies Jumping in the Bed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aYHyroP8bM
• Ryan Toys Review - Kid Spiderman Homecoming Movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lDdzgm2k1g

Emily Tube

This channel is aimed at young children and does a lot of great skits. Their videos are simple, colorful, and silly. At the time we made this module, their most popular video was titled "Babies Jumping In the Bed." Click the link below to watch it. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aYHyroP8bM) Emily Tube is great at telling fun stories with hilarious visuals while keeping videos really simple. This ensures that shooting videos with Emily is sustainable and fun for her, and it results in great material. 

Ryan Toys Review

Ryan Toys Review are early adopters with a humongous subscriber base and a knack for cute, fun videos that range from toy unboxing and testing to skits and challenges. They capitalize on a now-recognizable main character - a little boy named Ryan - and his daily adventures.

One of their latest videos at the time we made this module was titled “Kid Spiderman Homecoming Movie” and is classic Ryan Toys Review fare. Click the link below to watch it. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lDdzgm2k1g). Their storytelling is simple, their camera-work very much home video style, and their knack for making kids laugh is always spot on. In this video, they keep kids interested by introducing a toy (on the back of a giant spider) and then having that toy turn out to be extraordinary.

Ryan Toys Review is a great example of cuteness, storytelling, fun, and silliness winning out over fancy equipment, lighting, and camera work. 

Links

• Disney Toys Review - Peppa Pig Sand Prints: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bk0GQqWaddQ
• Cookie Swirl C - LOL Surprise Lil Sisters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9Hh8X0b3as

Disney Toys Review

This channel is quite diverse, doing everything from unboxing to cute, fun little skits using toys. They keep children entertained with close-up, colorful videos featuring some of the most popular toys out there. 

In the skit category, their “Peppa Pig Sand Prints With Sheriff Callie” video is a good example (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bk0GQqWaddQ). Here, they tell a very simple story using Peppa Pig toys and sand. Throughout the video, you can see hands playing with the toys, which you might think is a bad idea, but it works just fine for Disney Toys Review’s audience. 

Disney Toys Review shows you can make successful skit videos even if you don’t have child actors to appear in them. Your Amazon Prime account will do just fine. 

Cookie Swirl C

Cookie Swirl is a great example of making hybrid videos: part unboxing, part skit. She uses bright colors, recognizable toys and characters, and fun voices to entertain small children. 

At the time we made this module, one of her most recent videos was "LOL Surprise Lil Sisters." Click on the link to watch it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9Hh8X0b3as). The video starts like a toy skit, but then, a new LOL Baby doll is introduced, which leads into an unboxing session of several surprise eggs. As each egg is opened and its contents revealed, the new baby joins in on the skit fun. 

Again, Cookie Swirl C is a great example of mixing and matching existing video types. In this case, unboxing and toy skit, to find something you do well that works well for your audience.  

Links

• Dave & Ava - Learning Video Collection For Kids: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97wFth-uHVY
• Blippi - Learn About Fish For Children: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeJZ5JDNXQ0
• Funtastic TV - Heads, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWH-13EvrsA

I included this as a category here because many of you may want to make educational material for kids. I think this is a great idea, and can have lots of value. My first channel, Funtastic TV, was always meant to be both educational and fun, and I think that combination has served us well there. However, I want to be very clear: educational is not a channel type. Education is a value. And you can include that value in any kind of channel: vlogging, music, skits, toys, etc. The trick is to include it in ways entertain. Let’s look at a few examples of channels that are doing just that. 

Dave & Ava is a great animated channel that focuses on songs. They often feature educational videos. I want to watch one together titled “Learning Video Collection For Kids.” Click the link below to watch it. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97wFth-uHVY). 

This video uses simple, fun songs aimed straight at small children to teach basic things, like counting 1-10, the alphabet, and colors. As part of Dave & Ava’s brand of cuteness and fun, this educational video does very well. 

Another great example of great educational content comes from Blippi, a great character channel that teaches kids about all kinds of great stuff. One of his videos “Learn About Fish For Children with Blippi,” is particularly good. Click the link below to watch it. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeJZ5JDNXQ0). Blippi is great at being high-energy on screen, and he’s created a stellar, silly, memorable characters for kids to latch onto. He’s great at taking kids on fun tours of educational places and teaching them while continuing to be silly and entertaining. 

One more example, this time from one of my channels, Funtastic TV. The video is titled “Heads Shoulders Knees and Toes” is a good one to look at. Click the link below to watch it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWH-13EvrsA. You’ll see we’re using a well-known nursery rhyme and giving it a more educational spin by starting with a teacher-like character who tells you what you’re going to learn. We extend the song in order to teach kids more body parts, and we keep things very lively and visual throughout, with animated backgrounds, choreographed dances, and kids in different environments trying the dance themselves. 

One of the pitfalls I want to warn you about here is that kids don’t watch stuff because it’s educational. They watch stuff because it’s entertaining. It’s fun. Entertainment value still trumps all here, and it should be priority one for you in the education world. Can you be successful on YouTube with educational material? Absolutely! We’ve had lots of success with Funtastic TV and other similar channels. Just remember that above all, your videos need to be entertaining. 

Hi! This is David, with VidFire! Let’s talk about finding a successful model for your channel! 

Do you have a channel idea you’d like to pursue? Good. Your first research goal is to find someone who is doing something similar or related and getting the kinds of results you would like when it comes to views. In order to do this, we recommend using a website called SocialBlade.com. 

SocialBlade.com specializes in ranking and analyzing social media accounts, including YouTube channels, and it’s a great place to see who is succeeding. Click the link below to go to their homepage, and let’s conduct a quick hypothetical search. 

Here on the homepage you’ll note that SocialBlade ranks and analyzes all kinds of social media accounts. For our purposes, we’ll focus on YouTube, so go ahead and click the YouTube link at the top left of the screen. 

Now, to look at some of the channels aimed at kids and family, let’s search for the terms “Nursery Rhymes” and see what we find. 

Chu Chu TV is one of the first results. Let’s look at their SocialBlade page. 

You can see here that SocialBlade gives the channel a grade. It also tells us views and subscribers over the last 30 days, as well as some earnings estimates. 

If we scroll down, we can see a day-by-day analysis of their numbers, which is helpful. 

Near the bottom is one of the coolest things here, though: the YouTube progress graphs. Let’s check these out. 

You can tell here that views have gone from about 160 million in January of 2015 for this channel, to more than 460 million in October of 2017. That is some very steady and impressive growth!

Just at a glance here, would you say Chu Chu TV is doing well? Absolutely! Are they a good model of success to follow? Yes!

So how do you use this tool to find someone who is succeeding at what you find interesting? 

I would suggest searching for a keyword in the search field on the top right. You can find some heavy hitters and then work your way over to “Similar Channels” to find more like them. 

As you find people whose numbers look great and whose material looks like something you would like to do, go to YouTube to watch their early, mid, and latest material. Try to identify patterns in what they do that works. 

It’ll take some time, but the idea is simple: find people who are doing the thing you’d like to do and getting the results you’d like to get, then study their story and their material. Follow their model, and make sure to add your own creative contribution to make your channel unique, and you’ll be taking a step towards success on YouTube. 

Every great channel has a number of hit videos. When you find someone who is doing well at something you’d like to do, the next step is to study their hit videos. To get the very best look at what successful videos are doing, we like to use a tool called VidIQ, which we’ll introduce you to today.

VidIQ is a great YouTube tool on many fronts. Today, we’re going to talk about its value when it comes to analytics and finding patterns in successful videos. It’s available for a very reasonable monthly price. You can click the link below to learn more. 

www.vidiq.com

Let’s go through one example here: 

In our last module we looked at Chu Chu TV’s Socialblade page. Let’s look at one of their most successful videos now to see what VidIQ can tell us about it. We’ll be looking at a video titled “Johnny Johnny Yes Papa And Many More Videos.” You can click the link below to watch it yourself. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHSFpGBFGHY

Here on the right is my VidIQ stats card. You can see that VidIQ gives each video a score. This one has a 100. That’s amazing! That score is gleaned from tons of analytics, some of which you can see included below that big green number. This video has 1.3 BILLION views! There’s a number to shoot for!

In the top section, titled “Overview,” you get some useful numbers you hadn’t seen before, like how many views this video is racking up per hour. That’s super helpful because it tells you whether or not a video is hot right now. See, if you were just looking at the video’s total views, you wouldn’t know that. Those views could be super old, so imitating that video might not be a great idea. But on a video like the one we’re looking at by Chu Chu TV, that views per hour number is high, telling you the video is hot right now. 

The “Social” section gives you lots of numbers to try to portray the kind of engagement this video is getting. The most important one to watch there is the overall engagement rate. 

The next section, “SEO,” gives you a feel for how well this video is optimized for searches on YouTube and elsewhere. This score is largely based on the video’s use of keywords as tags, in the video’s title, and in its description. We’ll go over VidIQ’s uploading tools in our “Uploading A Video” section. 

The “Channel” section shows you some data regarding the channel: subscribers, views, and estimated earnings. It will also give you info concerning the channel’s MCN (multi-channel network) and how it’s performing. 

Under “Video Tags,” you’ll find the tags the video creators used for this video. This is helpful when you find a hit video in your niche, so you can use some of the keywords the hit video is using. Also, when blue badges with white text appear next to a keyword, that means this video is “ranking” for that keyword, which means it is one of the top 20 results shown on YouTube when users search for that keyword.

Hey! This is David with VidFire, and I’m here to tell you about your mission on YouTube: to entertain!

Viewers come to YouTube to be entertained. You know it because if you’re considering becoming a YouTube creator, you’re likely already a viewer, and you know why you go to YouTube. Maybe a friend recommends a video via social media and you click it. Maybe you huddle around someone’s desk at the office, or maybe you scan through your subscriptions late at night to kill time. Each of those times, you’re looking for something to change your mood, to lift your spirits, to make you laugh, or to impress or inspire you. That change of state - from bored to relaxed or from annoyed to excited - is entertainment. As a creator, providing entertainment for your viewers is your first and most important job. 

It’s essential to keep entertainment at the top of your priority list when you’re building a YouTube channel. Your channel won’t rise or fall on whether the camera work is great. It won’t win or lose depending on how well you play the guitar. It won’t succeed or fail based on how educational it is. Go ahead and look through the YouTube universe and you’ll see that there are thousands of channels out there with great camera work, awesome guitar playing, and tons of educational value, but no views. Why? They failed on their most important mission: to entertain!

Now, when I say this, I’m not saying you shouldn’t have great camera work, or play the guitar like a boss, or be highly educational. Those are all good things, but they’re only good if you add them as key ingredients of an entertaining video. If your video can help people change their emotional state in some positive way, it’s entertaining. Do that, and you can add all of the other great ingredients you want. You can add the things you want and the things you are best at and still get tons and tons of views. Why? Because you’re entertaining!

In the next few modules, we’re going to look at creators who are leading the way in entertainment. They’ve figured out how to help people feel strong feelings: excitement, empathy, warmth, or humor. They each do it differently, and going through their examples will help you begin to think about how you can get viewers and keep them on your channel. 

So remember: your mission on YouTube, should you choose to accept it, is to entertain! Embrace it, enjoy it, and commit to it, and you’ll succeed on YouTube. 

Hey! This is David with VidFire, and I’m here to talk to you about the power of stories. 

Here at VidFire, our approach to entertaining children is almost always built around stories. In a vlog, that story likely develops over time, as people become more and more familiar with you, what you do, and what’s going on in your life. For skits and songs, the story is much more obvious and central. A good, story-based video introduces a sense of peril at the beginning, several failed attempts at resolution during the body of the video that increase the emotional response, and then a final resolution at the end. 

Let’s look at a good example of storytelling. 

We do some great storytelling on our Funtastic TV Channel. One of our videos, “Superhero Finger Family,” deserves a closer look. Click below to watch it. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDWxOhlFsYo&t=3s 

The problem is introduced when Zoey is unexpectedly sucked into a video game by a giant, hairy arm! The evil purple gorilla traps her, and she can’t get away on her own. She’s tied up on a chair, and placed on a conveyor belt that leads to a burning oven! The peril is real. 

The build-up begins when dad tries to rescue her with his wham-whack-pow superpowers, but fails. It continues as mom gives it a shot, followed by sister and brother. As each new family member fails to rescue her, we watch the conveyer belt bring her closer and closer to her doom. 

Finally, the resolution comes from the least expected source: baby sister! She makes a few funny faces at the evil purple gorilla and manages to whack him hard enough to make him fly off of the screen. The day is saved, and the rest of the video is spent in silly celebration. 

This is a very simple story, but the key elements are there: 

• A problem is presented
• The problem grows and grows over several cycles
• A resolution is presented

If you’re looking to build stories, these are the basic building blocks. Start here, and go where your creativity takes you. 

Hey! This is David with VidFire, and today I’m going to teach you about telling a story visually. Let’s roll!

YouTube is a visual medium. That’s something you’ll want to keep in mind in many ways as you make your own videos. One of those important ways, is to remember to always tell you story visually. 

What do we mean by that? 

Let’s watch a video together to show you the answer. This is from a channel called Ryan’s Toy Review, and the video is called “Ryan Kids Halloween Trick or Treat.” Click below to watch it. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7lXHEvBles

If you watch it with the sound on, you’ll appreciate the music and sound effects, but the visual storytelling really comes forward when you turn the sound off. In fact, this is a good trick to use on your own videos to see if you’re telling your story visually, or relying too heavily on sound or dialogue. 

The premise is established very clearly when the three friends hold their trick-or-treating baskets in the air, and the problem is communicated clearly as they walk up to the huge, haunted house. One of the best things about this video is that there is no dialogue whatsoever. This forces the story to move very visually, and you can see it throughout. The way the three friends put their trick-or-treat baskets through the door before going in, the way the sneak up the steps, the expressions on their faces, and more.  

Each character is introduced slowly and clearly, as well as each challenge before we can get the treats. All of these things give the story structure and prepare us for the plot moving forward, and they all happen visually: by showing, not telling. 

I particularly love the way they introduce you to each battle, with the classic split screen ‘vs.’ layout. They also communicate who won clearly, with a score board. 

In the end, it’s obvious who won the contest and took the prize: a huge goblet full of the best treats. 

Once again, the visual storytelling carries the video, and there’s no need to have any dialogue in order to understand the story.

Remember: if you can learn to tell a story visually and compellingly, you can make a lot of money as a creator on YouTube for kids and families. 

Hey! This is David from VidFire, and I’m here to teach you about creating an emotional response with your videos. Let’s go!

People generally watch YouTube videos so that their moods can lighten and they can get their mind off of work or other life-related stress. Each video you make is going to create emotional responses in people. This is what entertainment is about. When you succeed at entertainment, you create feelings in your audience. When you fail at entertainment, you don’t create any feelings, and the result is boredom.  

Let’s look at a good example of creating an emotional response. One of our own channels, Zozo Show, has a song-based video we should watch. It’s titled “Songs About Sisters.” Click below to watch it. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_2PJIdXO4c

The first feeling we’re going for here is that “awwwww!” Feeling you get when something is just too cute to handle. The girls are in matching pajamas, there’s a little girl singing the song, and they’re just being so nice to each other! All of these things combine to give people that warm feeling inside that we associate with cuteness. 

The other feeling I see here is belonging. It’s a lonely world, and people are looking for a place to belong, to feel at home. This song creates that space with words like “you look like me” and “I still love you.” Belonging is a human need, and including it in a video is powerful.  

One of our videos on Funtastic TV is a particularly good example of creating an emotional response in viewers: it’s our original Finger Family Song video. Click the link below to watch it, and let’s look at the emotional responses it triggers. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUWJ23mjQ_w

From the very beginning, we establish a sense of humor and a sense of cuteness by displaying the smiling faces of several costumed children, along with the silly voice announcing the song’s title. Not only that, but our editing style is reminiscent of The Brady Bunch opening credits. The emotional response? A combination of “Awwww!” “Those were the good ol’ days!” and “Hahaha!”

When the lyrics begin, we make them about family, which adds another emotional connection: values. And when the first verse ends and we say “I love you,” we drive that values connection home even further. 

Finally, throughout the song we’re teaching kids to sign the words for family member names like daddy, mommy, brother, etc. This scores us one more values connection: education.

So “The Finger Family Song” scores emotional responses on the humor, cuteness, nostalgia, and values fronts. What other fronts are there? We’re just getting started. 

Excitement is another great emotion kids watching YouTube videos want to feel. Think about why you watch your favorite Netflix or Hulu show. You want a bit of excitement in your life, too. A good example of creating excitement for kids + families on YouTube is Funnel Vision. The dad on this channel is an excitement machine! Let’s watch one of their videos together. You can click the link below to watch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bhKp_PT-Y4

First, just notice the guy’s voice. It grabs you, doesn’t it? It gets your attention and doesn’t let go. His narrations are always very high-energy, and he always focuses on creating experiences for his family that others are going to find exciting. 

Excitement is about increasing the amount of energy in your viewers’ days, ending boredom, and infusing your viewers with an infectious shock of awesomeness!

Now, as you make your first few videos, keep feelings in mind. Be deliberate about the feelings you’re going for. This will make your videos more effective. Also, experiment with combining feelings in your video. As you look for ways to improve, think about intensifying your emotional engagement on one feeling, or adding another feeling to the mix. When you focus on the emotional impact of your videos, you take another step towards YouTube success.

Hi! David with VidFire here, and I’m here to talk to you about the difference between production value and entertainment value. Let’s do this!

We’ve just watched a couple of stellar videos that show some great, clear, visual storytelling. These examples are great for teaching the importance of story and visuals, but they’re also dangerous. They both display some pretty high production value, including green-screen work and animation. This may be intimidating to you, given that you’re just getting started. Odds are, you’re not spending thousands of dollars on each weekly video post, and so your production value - the quality of the filming, the artistic value of the camera angles, the precise zooming, the richness of the colors, etc. - won’t be comparable to a developed channel like Vlad Crazy Show. Is that going to keep you from succeeding?

No!

On YouTube, production value is nice, but it is not king. Professional camera work, great gear, and a film education can be useful in the right hands, but they aren’t what will make you a millionaire. What will? Entertainment value. 

Entertainment value is less about what camera you’re using and how great your shots are, and more about the value of your story, your characters, and your sense of humor. And it’s entertainment value that’s going to get you past the finish line first no matter what camera you’re using or how many videos you’ve made in the past. 

Let’s look at an example where story carries the video even if production quality isn’t quite there. Ryan Toys Review has an earlier, simpler video titled “Shark Playing Hide And Seek Activities For Kids.” Go ahead and click the link below and let’s walk through it. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCIPS0ezLLk

You’ll be able to tell right away that the lighting here isn’t great, and neither is the camera work. The shots are simpler and fewer, the colors aren’t as bright, and there are no fancy or expensive props to be seen. And yet the story unfolds. We begin with Ryan’s mom telling us what game they’re going to play. Then Ryan and his dad run and hide, and the shark comes looking for them. 

Where is the entertainment value? Does this video help kids alter their state? Feel something specific? Yes. And it does so using several tools. 

There’s a pretty clear story, first of all. The problem is that Ryan and his dad are being chased by a shark. Throughout the video, they try to get away, and they run through almost every room of their house.  In the end, they catch the shark and trap him under a pile of stuffed animals. 

There’s also a number of attempts at creating an emotional response: there’s tons of humor all over the video, as the family laughs and runs away from the shark chasing them. There’s also humor, with both Ryan and dad acting silly as they try to get away. Excitement is definitely present throughout, especially when the shark gets close to Ryan or dad and they try to slip away. 

Now look at the views on this puppy: 27 million at the time we made this module. Go ahead. Blink. Wet your eyes a bit, and look again: 27 million. Did a lack of production quality kill the video’s performance on YouTube? Did it kill views? Nope! So as you begin your own adventure, rest easy. Quit freaking out about not having a film degree or a $5,000 camera. Focus on what’s most important: entertainment value.

Hi! David with VidFire here! And today we’re going tot talk about the power of familiarity. Let’s roll!

Humans love things they know. That’s why you’re wearing that t-shirt right now. It’s why you go to the same handful of places for lunch on most days. It’s why we give Hollywood hundreds of millions of dollars to make sequels. How can you capitalize on this human characteristic on your YouTube channel? By keeping some things consistent in all of your videos. 

Consistent Attire 

You can create a lot of familiarity by having the actors in your videos wear distinctive and specific clothing regularly. Let’s say you have a cute little four-year-old girl. If you put the same outfit on her in every video - along with some whacky accessories - you create a sense of familiarity. You create memorability, too. She becomes so much easier to remember by her consistent clothing. And guess what? If you combine consistent attire with a few lines or silly habits, and a memorable name, you’ve turned your four-year-old actor girl into a character!

One great example of this kind of familiarity is Blippi. Click on the link below to see his channel homepage and you’ll see what I’m talking about immediately. 

https://www.youtube.com/user/BlippiVideos

This actor has taken a silly hat, glasses, a button-up shirt, a bow tie, a silly voice, and a propensity to dance like a maniac, and turned them into a solid, recognizable-anywhere character. His combination of silly ingredients is so unique that it’s memorable and instantly recognizable upon second glance. This means if a kid watches one Blippi video he likes, he will immediately recognize another one when he sees it, and Blippi is gonna get himself another view. 

Blippi pulled this off mostly with the power of consistent attire, and so can you. 

Consistent People and Places

Consistent people and places can also create a great sense of familiarity. Humans are generally pretty good at recognizing faces, and we tend to grow attached to places quite quickly, too. If your stories are taking place in a consistent and unique place, and the people in these stories are consistent as well, you have the makings of a memorable, familiar channel. 

One good example of this is a mammoth channel called Ryan Toys Review, a channel that currently focuses a lot on skits. You can visit their channel homepage by clicking on the link below. 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChGJGhZ9SOOHvBB0Y4DOO_w

Ryan, the little boy protagonist, is in every video. Every one. So much so that the channel bears his name. And where do these videos take place? Mostly, at Ryan’s family’s house. This creates a simple, understated - and often undetected but still present - sense of familiarity. Kids are likely to recognize Ryan’s face as well as that of his dad, who routinely appears in the videos as well. 

Consistent Thumbnails

Thumbnails are a crucial ingredient for YouTube success. Your thumbnail is the first thing your prospective viewer will see. You want thumbnails that get to the core of what your video is about and grab passerby’s attention to get them to watch. We’ll talk more about thumbnails in the “Marketing Your Video” section. 

For now, we want to note that your thumbnails should develop a certain visual style over time. Just like characters, attire, and other things can establish a sense of familiarity, so can thumbnails. People are seeing your video thumbnail in a sea of material. Remember when you were in grade school and you finished going through the line in the cafeteria? You’d look out on that sea of faces, and what would you do? You’d look for your friends! And when you found them, you headed straight towards their table. This is exactly what browsing on YouTube is like. People are looking at tons of content. If yours looks familiar - like an old friend - people will go straight for it and watch it. You want your thumbnails to always remind people of the things they love about your content. If you can pull that off, you’re going to get more clicks and more views. 

A great example of top-notch thumbnail work is Little Baby Bum, one of the heaviest-hitting nursery rhymes channels on YouTube. Click the link below to go to their channel homepage. 

https://www.youtube.com/user/LittleBabyBum 

As you scroll down, you’ll begin to get a feel for their thumbnail style. Brightly colored backgrounds, their logo always in the top right corner, and cute, colorful characters always appear there. 

If you scroll down further, you’ll see another thumbnail style for a playlist they call “LBB Junior Videos.” Notice how those feel a little different? The backgrounds are one solid color, and they tend to have fewer characters on them. Little kid eyes all over the world can recognize a Little Baby Bum thumbnail when they see it, and they click and watch the videos they already know they’re going to love. 

Consistent thumbnails that establish a sense of familiarity for prospective viewers can make it so that your videos get clicked when scores of other videos are on the screen. Pay attention to that, and you’ll be on the path to YouTube success.

Consistent Musical Style

If you’re building a music channel, you have yet another weapon in the fight for familiarity: your sound. Just like people will recognize a character or a certain thumbnail style, they can grow to recognize and love your musical style. 

A good example of success in establishing and maintaining a familiar, pleasant musical style is Super Simple Songs. Click the link below to watch one of their hour-long compilations of videos, and let’s listen together. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ljHzljQrY8 

You’ll notice that their tracks tend to have a light touch. There are no big drum sets or electric guitars here. Instead, you hear a lot of orchestral instruments like xylophones and strings. Their arrangements stay quite minimal, and the lead vocal is always very clear and up front in their mix. You’ll also notice that many of their videos feature the same singers. Even though these singers aren’t celebrities and you can’t see their faces, you can recognize their voices from song to song, adding to a sense of familiarity. 

Music can be a powerful way to make your videos memorable and recognizable. When you develop a deliberate, unique, pleasant musical style, you help people feel like they know your content. And people tend to like things they know. 

Branded Bumpers and End Screens

If you take all of the things we’ve talked about in this familiarity module: consistent attire, people, places, thumbnails, and musical style, and you add them all up, they begin to look like a brand. 

Imagine building a channel where everything: your characters, the places where they play and have adventures, the thumbnails you design for each video, and the music you play or have in the background, all come together consistently to help people recognize who you are. Wouldn’t that make your channel strong? 

To take that sense of familiarity further, you can develop a unique logo for your channel, and include it - along with music or voice over audio - as a “branded bumper” during your videos. A branded bumper is a brief video snippet that displays your channel name and logo with consistent visuals and audio. It helps people know they’re watching one of your videos. 

You can also use branded end screens - the elements that appear during the last twenty seconds of your video - to remind people whose video they’re watching and give them a sense of familiarity there as well. 

Good, consistent use of video, design, and audio elements in your videos combine to build a powerful, memorable, and recognizable experience for your viewers. That experience is called a brand. When you build a strong brand, you strengthen your channel and take another step towards YouTube success. 

Hey! This is David with VidFire! And today, we’re going to talk about the video making process!

This is not meant to be a definitive guide on film-making. There are lots of great resources out there that can give you all the info you need on that. Our purpose here is to teach you the very basics so you can engage and succeed on your mission: to entertain!

Making a video consists of several phases we’re going to go over in this section. Let’s list and describe each one briefly so you can begin to get an idea what making a video takes. 

First comes the planning phase. In this phase, you brainstorm a video idea, write out the story you’re trying to capture, and then plan your shots. If you prepare well, the next phase will be much easier. 

Second is the shooting phase, or production. In this phase, you make sure you get all of the shots you are going to need to tell your story. You refer to material from your planning phase to make sure you don’t miss anything. 

Third is the editing phase, or post-production. In this phase, you take the footage you created when you were shooting, and slice and arrange it in order to tell you story in a way that makes sense for your viewers. 

Fourth and last, we’ll do some how-to work on thumbnails here as well. Thumbnails are essential to success on YouTube, and we want to make sure you know what the process of making them looks like. 

If you’re finding this intimidating, don’t you worry. We’re going to walk you through this process slowly and carefully in this section, and you’ll get to come along with us as we work on a new video for our Fam Jam channel. This means you’ll get to see how we do things and learn as you go. 

Hey! This is David from VidFire! Let’s talk about the video making toolbox!

In the last module, we went over all phases of the video-making process very briefly. We’ll be digging in to them later in this section. But now that you know the basics of what the different phases of making a video are, you’re ready to think about what gear you’ll need to make your videos. We have a few simple recommendations that will help you get started making some great, entertaining stuff.

All you need to get started is a camera, some video editing software, and some image editing software. Let’s look at the simplest possible setup to get you started. 

First, don’t worry about an expensive camera. We recommend shooting film using your smartphone. That’s right. Why? Because you already have it. And because it’ll do the job. Don’t have a phone? Grab a used iPhone 5 or 5s. They’re inexpensive (you can find one on eBay for under $150) and they’ll do the trick. For our demonstrations in this section, we’ll be using the latest iPhone.

Second, find the simplest video editing software possible. If you’re on a Mac, like us, we recommend iMovie. It’s a free piece of Apple software that comes with your iMac or MacBook, and you can easily install it from the Apple App Store. 

If you’re on a PC using Windows, we recommend Windows Movie Maker. It’s Windows’ free video editing software, and it’s good enough. If you’re on a PC running an operating system other than Windows, I’m going to assume you’re more tech-savvy and you can search for a good solution for yourself on the web. For the purpose of demonstration in this section, we’ll be using iMovie.

Last, for the purposes of creating thumbnails, you’re going to need a photo editing program. We use Adobe Photoshop, which is available for $19.99 per month on Adobe’s website. If that seems too hot for your blood right now, we’d recommend an app like GIMP, which is free and open-source. For the purpose of our demonstrations in this section, we’ll be using Photoshop. 

Remember, the gear doesn’t have to be top-notch before you can make videos that are hilariously entertaining. Get the simplest setup up and running and you can move on to the fun part: making videos!

Hey! David here from VidFire, and today we’re going to talk about the video planning phase, or pre-production. Let’s do this!

The first part is coming up with an idea that you think will entertain your audience. This initial idea is the spark that will eventually turn into a fun and entertaining video. To look for ideas, you can look through recent uploads for big, successful channels you share an audience with. You can look at trending topics on the web, or you can just get creative and come up with your on crazy new idea. 

One important recommendation we’ll make is that you should keep a running list of ideas you like, and you should always be adding to that list. That way, when you’re shopping for new ideas, you have a place to go to get started. Coming up with great new ideas every week or every day can be daunting, and you want to make it as easy for yourself as possible. A list of great ideas waiting for you every time you need one? That’s easy. 

This brainstorming process is different for everyone, but we wanted to show you how we do it. So we’re going to go hang with Aaron and his team and watch them do one of their brainstorming sessions. Aaron, take it away!

Thanks, Aaron! 

Now that you’ve come up with your great video idea, what’s the next step? You need to build this great idea up to the point where you can shoot a video that tells it well. 

For example, let’s say your idea was to do a version of “Johnny Johnny Yes Papa” that stars Gru and his Minions. Great! That’s an entertaining, fun idea. And now you need to figure out how to tell the story in a video. 

When we get to this part, we often brainstorm some more and think about what feelings we want to evoke in people. Let’s say that for this one we want to focus on humor. Our mission is to make kids laugh so hard their abs hurt. Good. Now that we know that’s the feeling we’re going for, we come up with ideas on how to do it. We may have tons of these. We’ll write them all down. We won’t say no to any of them. All of them are good and all of them are going on our list. Once we’ve done that for a good while and we feel like the ideas have stopped flowing, we go through that list and pick out the real winners. 

Now that you have a good idea what emotional reaction you’re going for and how you’re going to do it, you need to work it into a story. 

The format of “Johnny Johnny Yes Papa” is a simple cycle: kid sneaks out of bed at bed time and is caught by father and sent back to bed. In your video, let’s say the father will be Gru and the kids will be the Minions. How do you work your funny ideas into this story structure? As you write down the story part by part, you’ll get a clearer understanding of the shots you’re going to need in order to tell this story well. Write those shots down. 

Once you know how your story will unfold and you know what shots you’re going to need to make it happen, you’re ready to roll! For an example of how to pull this off, we’re going to go hang with Aaron and his team and see how they plan the same Fam Jam video we watched them brainstorm just a few minutes ago. 

In this module, you’ve learned about brainstorming to come up with your initial video idea, and then the brainstorming and writing it takes to turn your great idea into a video that is ready to be shot.

Hi! David with VidFire here, and today we’re going to talk about production, or shooting your video. Let’s go!

You’ve come up with a great video idea and you’ve filled it out with all of the details you need to make a great video. You know the shots you’re going to need to tell the story, and now you’re ready to make sure you get all those shots. 

As you shoot your video, we recommend you keep a few things in mind: 

• Zoom in on important things. In our earlier “How to get and keep viewers” section, we talked about visual storytelling. Now is the time for you to put those ideas to work! Make sure you’re capturing important things that happen in the clearest way possible. For children, very close shots can be a great way to communicate clearly. 
• Light things as brightly as you can. If you’re indoors, turn on your lights and lamps. If you’re outside, be sure to do it when the light is bright. Also, always make sure your actors don’t have big sources of lights behind them that make their faces look dark and shadowy. This is called backlighting, and it can ruin your fun video. So as you look through the lens, be sure your actors’ faces are lit well and you can see their eyes, nose, and mouth. 
• Before you wrap up your shooting session, go through your footage quickly to make sure you got every shot you needed and all of your shots look good. It would be a big inconvenience to have to get actors back into costume later to get a shot you later found out was blurry. 

Without further ado, let’s join Aaron and his team for their shooting session of the same Fam Jam video you saw in the last module. Aaron, show us how it’s done!

Shooting can be stressful, but it can also be fun. As you shoot more and more of your videos, figure out ways to make things enjoyable for you and your actors. The more fun you’re having, the more fun your audience will have and the more likely you are to make videos again. 

Hey! This is David with VidFire, and today we’re going to talk about post-production: editing, sound effects, and more!

You’ve come up with a great video idea, you’ve turned it into a detailed list of the shots you need, you’ve gotten all of those shots on your trusty smart phone, and now you’re ready to stitch all of those shots together into one awesome, entertaining video! As you do this, keep a few things in mind: 

• Favor intense, short videos. A 2-minute video that never stops making you laugh is always better than a 5-minute video that is just okay. 
• Favor quick pacing. Make your edits tight. Don’t linger on a shot longer than you need to to tell the story. 
• Establish events clearly. When something important happens, use your clearest shots to show it, and accompany it with other things - sound effects or special effects, if possible - to make it very clear. When your eyes and your ears combine to tell you something important happened, it helps.

Now, for a hands-on session, let’s go hang out with Aaron and his team as they edit their new Fam Jam video and take us along for the ride.

As you edit your video, you’ll begin to see the final result of all of your work: a finished, visual story. This is a great time for you to take notes on things you wish you would have done differently during the planning and shooting phases. Did a shot not quite turn out the way you wanted? Do you have an idea on how to better tell the story? Write those ideas down. Do what you can to improve and do things better next time. 

When you think you’ve done good work editing, test your video on an appropriate audience. We typically test videos on our easily available, age-appropriate crowd: our kids. Are there parts they don’t get? How can you improve those? Are there parts where they laugh out loud? How can you give those more room? 

Another thing you can do to test your video is mute the audio and make sure the story still carries when it’s just told visually. 

Editing video might be one of the most technical and time-consuming parts of making your videos. As you begin editing, be patient with the tools and with yourself. The more you edit, the better you’ll become at it, and the more clearly your videos will communicate with your audience to entertain them. 

Hey! This is David with VidFire! And today I’m going to show you how to make a great thumbnail!

We’ve talked about thumbnails being one of the most important ingredients for YouTube success. When prospective viewers are on the site, the first thing they’ll see is your thumbnail among many, many other options. In order to get them to click on yours, you need to give them a reason. You need to show them that your video is better than the other options out there. Let’s talk about how to pull that off. 

First, let’s deal with the elephant in the room: should you simply choose a screen shot of your video to be your thumbnail? While this may work in a few exceptional cases, the rule is no. Your thumbnail, in many ways, bears the greatest burden of all your assets: to get people’s attention among a lot of competition and convince them to click. Don’t leave that to an automatically or quickly selected screen shot. Put some smart work into thumbnails, and your videos will perform much better. 

Some guidelines to keep in mind are: 

• Focus on human faces. People tend to pay attention when they see another person’s face. If that face is clearly emotive: surprised, angry, sad, etc., that attention goes up. Focusing on faces on your thumbnails is a great way to get eyes on them. 
• Use bright colors. You want your thumbnail to stand out among its peers. Color can help you do that, and can help communicate to kids + families that your video is fun. 
• Exaggerate the action. We’ve had lots of success taking shots from our video and making the action in them look just a little more ridiculous. This helps communicate what goes on in your video, and can wind up looking great. 
• Be consistent. As you post more and more videos, try to develop an overall thumbnail style. This may include your channel logo, or a certain visual style. The more recognizable your thumbnails are, the more your fans will click them to watch your videos. 

To see a master at work, let’s visit Aaron at his studio while he prepares a thumbnail for a new Fam Jam video. 

Remember, people judge a video by its thumbnail all the time. Make sure you put your best foot forward when you design your thumbnail. A little bit of smart effort in this department will go a long way towards helping you succeed on YouTube. 

Hey! This is David from VidFire! And today we’re going to talk about YouTube video metadata. Let’s go!

When we upload, we use a great tool called VidIQ. This tool gives you lots of useful numbers to guide you in your effort to use keywords, titles, and descriptions the best way possible. It creates a simple checklist for you to follow, and gives you some useful, realtime feedback regarding your video’s metadata. It’s available at the link below. 

https://vidiq.com/

Now, we just uploaded our latest video onto our Fam Jam channel, and we’re ready to get to work on metadata. Let’s take it from the beginning and walk you through the entire process. 

I like to work backwards, focusing on keywords first. Now this video is about [whatever] and the first thing I’m going to work on is keywords. There are some standard ones we use for our channel generally, but beyond that, we need to find the ones that will work best, and for that, we’re going to do some keyword research. 

Hey! David here, from VidFire! Today I’m going to teach you about keyword research! Let’s go!

Keyword research is the process we use in order to determine which word combinations will be most effective in describing and marketing our new video. As we said at the beginning of this section, keywords are one of the tools we use to let YouTube know what our video is about. But on YouTube, they do much more. 

The reason is simple: as keywords are used by hundreds of thousands of creators on YouTube, trends develop among them. Some keywords become very popular among both creators and viewers. When a keyword is popular among viewers, it means viewers search for that combination of words very often in the YouTube search field. A good example, in the kids + family space, would be “Nurery Rhymes.” This keyword receives tons of searches every month.   That means it’s high traffic. Because it receives tons of searches, lots of creators have made videos aimed at receiving some of the search traffic associated with it. That means it’s high competition.

A high-traffic, high-competition keyword is more difficult for a small, just-off-the-ground YouTube channel to get significant views from. The top results typically have many millions of views, and your new video with under a thousand views can easily be relegated to the 237,856th spot. 

However, high-traffic, high-competition keywords are not the only ones out there. You can find search traffic success using keywords that match your channel’s weight class. How do we find keywords that are fairly popular but low-competition? Meet the YouTube search bar and its genius auto-suggestions. 

We’re still working on our Baby Baby video on Fam Jam, so let’s do some keyword research for it right now. We’d begin with a very obvious word like baby. Of course that’s got tons of results and tons of searches. It’s high-traffic and high-competition. But as we type it in, YouTube begins to suggest some extended search phrases below. These are key. Take a look at a few of them, their results, etc., by clicking them. 

What you want to find is an auto-suggested keywords phrase that has a relatively low number of results. That means it’s pretty high-traffic (enough that YouTube auto-suggests it) but also pretty low-competition (fewer results when people search for it). It’s keywords like this that will lead to lots of views from search, because the high traffic means lots of people are searching for this term, while the low-competition means your video is more likely to show up among the first results for this term, putting eyes on your thumbnail and sending viewers to your video. Showing up in the top twenty results is called “ranking.”

VidIQ also provides some useful tools for determining which keywords to use for your video. If you begin your keyword entry with some more general terms, VidIQ recommends further keywords based on competing videos in your niche. Let’s try a few to see how they work. 

While this is a useful tool, it’s important to remember that you can’t just add keyword after keyword based on VidIQ’s suggestions. You need to be sure these keywords are relevant to your video and also useful to your search rankings, so don’t quit doing your homework. 

A good set of keywords blends very specific ones - for instance, your video’s central theme or your channel name - with high-traffic, high-competition ones that tell YouTube which pool you’re playing in, as well as high-traffic, low-competition keywords that you have a chance to rank with. A balanced approach in your keyword game will lead to better performance on YouTube.

Once you’ve entered all of your keywords, it’s time to work on your description and title. Looking at the upload screen here with VidIQ, you’ll see that VidIQ is suggesting I use some keywords in both my description and my title. 

The idea here is that the keywords that are most important to you and most central to your video should appear on all three of these fields: keywords, description, and title. This gives YouTube a simple, repeated message: this video is about [keyword].

Let’s begin with our title. VidIQ suggests several for this video. It suggests these because they’re the highest-traffic keywords in my “keywords” field. I should take that into account, but I can use other keywords in the title as well. 

Let me take a second to point out now that VidIQ is keeping score on my performance as I go along. Their scorecard, which appears on the right, is full of lots of insightful things you should keep an eye on. See here? This big number is their SEO score. You want to get as close to a 100 as you can there. You do that by making sure your keywords are strong, that they appear in your title and description, and that your video ranks for at least a handful of them. We’ll keep watching our score go up as we populate these fields, too. 

Let’s fill out our description now.

Typically, I save templates for my video descriptions that include a video description, a place to repeat the video title, a few links to some of my best-performing videos, and my channel description. This is a pattern I’ve found works well for reinforcing channel keywords, giving people click material, and describing the current video. 

The key to a good description for the video is to make it short, easy to read, and full of your most important keywords. Sometimes that can be a tough puzzle to solve, but let’s give it a shot here for this video. 

Remember: keywords, descriptions, and titles tell YouTube what your video is about, they put you in front of the right viewers, and they can improve your YouTube performance significantly. 

Did you know that YouTube gives you opportunities to promote your own videos on your videos? That’s right! You can promote traffic from one of your videos to another, helping your viewers watch not one, but two, or five, or fifteen of your videos. YouTube makes this possible through two tools: cards and end screens. 

Cards are small links that pop up at determined times during your video and contain links. You can set them up by going to the “Cards” tab of your video editor. Once you’re there, you’ll notice a video viewing screen on the left with a video timeline below it, and a large button on the right that says “Add Card.” 

To add a card, use your cursor to click the spot on the video timeline at which you’d like a card to pop up, and then click “Add Card.” When you do, you’ll be presented with options. We always suggest using the “Video / Playlist” option. Once you click that one, you’ll be presented with a pop-up list of all of your videos and playlists. We haven’t talked about playlists quite yet, but we will in the “Build a Great Homepage” module of this same section. For now, you should know that playlists are collections of your videos that can be played from beginning to end without the need for more clicks from your viewers or further interruptions. They’re great tools for getting people to watch lots of your videos as soon as they begin with one. 

So let’s think about it: if you link to a single video in a card, how many views are you every going to get from that? One. But if you link to a playlist, you could get several. This is why we recommend always linking to playlists on your cards. 

We’ll add a few more of these for our video. At the time we made this module, YouTube allows 5 cards total, and you should always take advantage of every opportunity to promote your own videos. 

Next, let’s talk about end screens. End screens are displayed during the last 20 seconds of your video. During these 20 seconds, you can set up links you’d like your viewers to click. There are many possible kinds of end screen elements, but we suggest always adding video links and a subscription link. 

You’ll notice that this screen looks somewhat like the cards screen we just looked at. The video appears on the left, and the “Add” button appears on the right. First, let’s add a video element to the end screen. I like to add the “Best For Viewer” option, which allows YouTube’s algorithm to determine which of your videos is most likely to be clicked by a viewer. Let’s choose it and see what happens. 

Alright, we can see it on the left now, that little box on the top right. By default, all elements appear at the top right of the video screen. We’ll want to move some of them after creating them, and we can do that by simply clicking and dragging them around. For now, though, let’s leave that video link where it is. 

Next, let’s add one more element: a subscribe link. You can see now that we added it, that it appears in the top left corner of the video, but is covered by the video link we added earlier. We can select it by clicking on it and then dragging it to the left, where it’s once again visible. 

To top it off, we can link to a playlist - we just talked about these and their importance, and we’ll talk more about them soon in this same section - and voila! We have ourselves a great end screen that encourages people to watch our videos and subscribe to our channel. 

Cards and end screens present great opportunities for you to send traffic to your own videos and ensure that viewers who come to your channel for one video stay for more. 

Hey! This is David, from VidFire, and I’m here to talk about closed captioning. Let’s get started!

Closed captioning text is another great aid in helping YouTube understand what your video is about. You can add them pretty easily under the “Subtitles / CC” tab of the video manager. Let’s click there for this latest Fam Jam video and walk you through how to do this. 

You can see we just got here and there’s a big blue button on the right that reads “Add new subtitles or CC.” When you click it, go ahead and select “English” from the dropdown. When you do that, you’ll move on to the next screen. 

Now you can see a set of buttons on the right. From those, you’ll choose “Create new subtitles or CC,” which is the bottom option. When you click there, you’ll be ready to begin. 

On the left you’ll see the controls you’ll be using to type in subtitles. On the right you’ll see your video, which you can play, bit by bit. The way this tool works is you listen to a portion of your video on the right, and then in the left you write down the closed captions for that portion. 

This is something you should try in order to understand it. You’ll notice that when you enter a new subtitle, the subtitle ends where your cursor is. That’s how the system works. You’re always documenting what you just heard in your video. 

Go ahead and go through your entire video this way, entering your closed captions. When you’re done, click “Publish” on the top right corner, and you’ll be ready to go!

Closed captions are crawled by YouTube’s search algorithm, so filling them out gives you yet another chance at getting your video in front of prospective viewers at just the right time. 

Hey! David from VidFire here! And I’m here to talk to you about organizing videos into playlists. Let’s go!

We’ve mentioned playlists briefly in past modules and sections of the course, and now I want to take a few minutes to talk about them a bit more in depth. 

Playlists are groups of videos that you or YouTube can create in order to facilitate people spending more time watching your videos. Way back in the “How YouTube Works” section, we talked about the importance of watch time. Playlists are essential to watch time because once a user clicks on your playlist, all of the videos on that playlist will play back to back without the user ever having to click “next” or anything. 

That’s pretty magical! 

As soon as you have more than a handful of videos posted to your channel, begin to curate them and collect them into playlists. You can do so by theme, by style, or in any other way that you think would make sense to your users. You’ll use these playlists in lots of places, such as cards, end screens, and your channel homepage. 

Make it a priority to create new playlists and keep old ones fresh on a weekly basis. We’ve found that YouTube values new and fresh playlists, and that this plays into their algorithm as far as the value of your channel and your content. 

Again, playlists can be a great tool to keep people watching videos on your channel. Take advantage of them, and you’ll be one step closer to success on YouTube!

Hey! This is David from VidFire, and today we’re going to talk about how to create a great channel homepage!

Your channel homepage should look great and help people find great videos to watch. YouTube makes lots of tools available to creators in order to customize and deck out their channel home pages. Let’s walk through Fam Jam’s homepage and see what we have there. 

The first thing I want to talk about is your channel cover image and your profile pic. These are two very important images. They should communicate the right emotions to your chosen audience, and do it well. We talked about thumbnails in the “How to make a video” section. If thumbnails are the covers to your video, these two images are the covers to your channel! Put in some smart effort here to make your channel look great. 

Next, let’s talk about channel trailers. You can choose one of your best videos to be a channel trailer, or you can piece together a brief “best of” reel that does the job. However you do it, your channel trailer should give people a good idea what they should expect from your channel. 

From there on, you can add sections to your channel home page. YouTube makes some available from the get-go, like “Uploads” or “Popular Uploads.” Beyond that, you can include the contents of a playlist as well. I like to break up these lists as I go along. I typically do a horizontal row and then a vertical one in order to keep things visually interesting. You want people to spend time here if they land here. You want them to have lots of material to choose from when it comes to what to watch, and you want them to be guided to your best videos. 

A solid homepage is visually attractive and interesting. It helps people know what to expect from your channel and keeps them browsing your videos and watching them. Pay attention to that and you’ll be one step closer to YouTube success!

Hi! This is David, with VidFire, and today, I’m going to introduce you to YouTube analytics!

One of the keys to success on YouTube is the ability to see what works and what doesn’t. YouTube provides lots of great tools for you to do just that. They call them analytics tools, and learning to read these well will help you find patterns and make more informed decisions about what your next move should be in order to grow. 

Let me give you an example. At the very beginning of the course I mentioned that “Kids Playing in Death Valley” was one of our first hit videos on our Fam Jam channel. That video changed everything for us! Let’s take a look at its analytics.

Under the “Analytics” tab on the left-hand side of your Creator Studio, we can see that video’s entire history. Let’s take a look. 

We’ll click on “Watch Time” to see more details there. 

Here’s that crazy day the views climbed on this video and we knew we had a hit on our hands. See here? On June 10 2016 we had 1,500 minutes of watch time for this video. About a month later, on July 16 2016, that same video got 1.2 million views in just that day. 

We saw that for whatever reason, this video was getting tons of views, while several other videos we posted were not. What did we do? We made another similar video! Since then, we’ve made lots of spinoff videos, each with its own unique spin on the original, and lots of them have been successful for us. That is the power of analytics: seeing what’s happening, detecting a pattern, and using it to determine what your next move is. 

In this section, we’ll go over what you need to know in analytics to get you identifying useful patterns and making smart decisions on your channel. This isn’t an exhaustive look at every screen. You can find that elsewhere. This is a close look at the tools that will be most helpful to you in your quest for YouTube success, and examples on how to use them best.

Hi! This is David, with VidFire, and today I’m going to introduce you to the Analytics Overview Screen!

The analytics overview screen gives you tons of insight on how your channel is doing at a glance. To go there, click “Analytics.” 

The four biggest sections here are dedicated to the things you should keep your eyes on: watch time, views, and results in dollars! On the top left, you can tell how much time people have spent watching your videos in the selected time period. On the top right, you can see how much time the average person spends watching one of your videos. On the bottom left, you’ll see your number of views, and on the bottom right, your estimated revenue for the selected period. 

I want to pull your attention to the top right number. In our experience, it’s been one of the most important. To understand why, let’s have a bit of a refresher on how YouTube works. 

YouTube makes its money on advertising. Their ads exist just about everywhere on the site. The most obvious ones play before each video, but there are lots more. Some pop up from the bottom of your video while people are watching. Others appear on the right-hand side of the screen, above YouTube’s suggestions of what you should watch next. Every minute, every second viewers spend watching one of your videos, you’re making YouTube - and yourself - money. 

So let’s say YouTube’s algorithm begins to send some traffic to one of your videos. You’re really proud of this one, it took you forever to come up with the perfect idea, and now you’re getting a few suggested views. Let’s say something like 10 per day. What happens if you video is 4 minutes long, but YouTube notices people are only watching 30 seconds of it? Is that a good place for YouTube to send viewers? Nope. Heartbreaking, right? It would be a much better place to send viewers if they watched it for two minutes or more, or even one minute or more, on average. YouTube would be getting multiples of the advertising time from your video, and hence four times the cash. Common sense. 

We’re looking at the info here for one of our channels, Fam Jam, and you can see that the average view duration is 1:26. This is a pretty successful channel getting 43 million views per month, so you’re pretty safe setting this average view duration as a goal for your own channel. 

YouTube knows your channel is a good place to send viewers if those viewers spend more time on your videos than on someone else’s, and that, my friends, means you need to work smart to maximize your average view duration. 

Hi! David from VidFire here, and I’m here to show you the Audience Retention page!

When it comes to learning what works and what doesn’t in your videos, the audience retention page is going to become your best friend. On this page, you’ll be able to see which videos are keeping viewers watching, and which ones aren’t. You’ll also be able to tell which moments in your videos are most impactful or interesting to your audience. With these tools, you’ll be able to make smarter moves on your channel, repeating what works and getting rid of what doesn’t, as you work towards your hit video. 

To get to this page, click the “Audience retention” link in the “Analytics” section on the left-hand side of the YouTube Creator Studio.

The firs thing you’ll see is a graph that tells you your average view duration per day. When that line goes up, it’s because people spent more time, on average, watching one of your videos. When it goes down, it means they spent less. Up is good news, down is bad. At the top left, you’ll see your average view duration in minutes and seconds. That’s the average of all of the ups and downs portrayed on the graph, and it’s the number you’re looking to maximize. 

For the channel we’re looking at right now, Fam Jam, that number is 1:26. Because this is a pretty successful channel, I’d encourage you to set this number as a good goal for your own channel. 

So, what do you do if your average view duration is looking lower than you’d like? Great question!

The best thing you can do to bring up your average view duration is understand which of your videos are doing better, which are doing the worst, and try to find patterns there. Let’s walk through some examples here on Fam Jam. 

Our most successful video for this period of time is Baby Baby Yes Papa. Let’s look at how it does on audience retention to learn what moments are most interesting or least interesting to our audience. 

Now that we’ve clicked on that one video, we’re looking at audience retention data just for that video. The big graph shows you what retention looks like over the duration of the video. The left extreme represents the video’s beginning, and the right extreme represents the video’s end. The line drawn between them tells you what percentage of the viewers who started the video made it to the specified duration. In this graph, success looks like a flat line (no one is leaving for an extended period of time) and failure looks like a steep decline (lots of people leaving quickly). If you have a flat line at a certain point in your video, that’s a good part of your video. You’ll want to know what goes on at that point so you can do more of it in your next posts. If you see a steep decline, it means it’s a troublesome part of the video that’s losing you viewers fast. You’ll want to know what’s there so you can eliminate those kinds of moments in your future posts. For the video we’re looking at here, you can tell that we lose viewers more quickly in those first twenty seconds or so, during our branded bumper. Things get a little less steep once the singing starts and the video story begins. 

There’s a view of this screen that I find really helpful. It’s called the “relative audience retention” graph. You’ll find it to the top left of the graph. See there? Right now you can tell we’ve selected “absolute audience retention.” Let’s switch over to “relative audience retention.” 

“Absolute audience retention” shows you the percentage of people that are still watching your video at any given time. “Relative audience retention” shows you how that percentage compares to the average on YouTube for videos of your type. This is helpful because YouTube is a market, and in any market, there’s competition. If YouTube sees that you’re delivering above average results for videos of your type, it makes them more likely to send viewers to your videos. 

In the “relative audience retention” graph, success means a higher point on the graph. The higher, the better. Failure means a lower point on the graph. The lower, the worst. If there’s a high point on the graph, it means that moment is keeping more people when compared to your competition. You’ll want to know what’s going on there so you can do more of it in future videos. If there’s a low point, it means you’re retaining fewer viewers compared to your competition. You’ll want to know what’s going on there so you can do less of it in  your future videos. For this video, we see a peak in interest around the minute mark. It’s a small climb that happens while she’s wearing her costume. Note to self: costumes work. Then, you see a steep fall until about 1:44, and another climb. What gets us that last climb? Ashlynn’s face covered in cake! Note to self: messes work! 

The audience retention screen is one of the most powerful tools YouTube gives you. It allows you to pinpoint successful or troubled videos, and then see which moments in those videos do well and which ones don’t. If you read this screen well and often, and then act according to the patterns you find, you’ll improve your YouTube performance at the best rate possible.

Hi! This is David, from VidFire! Let’s talk about the realtime analytics page!

This page is designed to give you info on what has been going on with your channel for the last 48 hours. It’s the page you’ll likely obsess over as you work towards your first hit, checking again and again for a spike that means you’ve hit pay dirt. Because YouTube’s other analytics pages are always a day or two behind in the data they display, the realtime page becomes the only place you can see what just happened. This makes it useful for spotting patterns early. 

To get to the realtime page, click “Realtime” under “Analytics” on the left-hand column of the Creator Studio. 

Let’s take a look at Fam Jam’s realtime report. 

On the top left, you can see the views we’ve received in the last 48 hours. Right now, it’s 5.8 million. Each blue column represents one hour. This graph makes it very easy to see when people come to watch our channel. The peaks are consistently in the morning. 

On the top right, you can see the views we’ve received in the last 60 minutes. Right now, it’s 18,000. 

If you scroll down a bit, you’ll see similar reports for each video you’ve uploaded, in reverse chronological order, newest video first.

You can tell here that our most recent video, titled “Learn Colors With Hopper Bouncy Balls,” we’ve had 60,000 views in the last 48 hours and 3,900 of those have come within the last 60 minutes. 

As you scroll down, you can see that each video differs. Some of them have fewer views than others. So, what if you want to see all of your heaviest hitters together? You can click on the “Estimated Views 48 Hours” column to sort by that column, and then your highest-view videos will all come first. Let’s take a look at what that does for us. 

As soon as we do that, our “Baby Baby Yes Papa” video comes to the top, with 4 million views in the last 48 hours. That’s most of the views we’ve gotten! As we’ve talked about in our “How YouTube Works” section, having one hit video that does most of the earnings work for you is pretty commonplace. For our Fam Jam channel, this is that video for this time period.

As we scroll down, the views per video keep going down. Isolating which videos are racking up views right this minute can help us see what works and what doesn’t, which can help us improve our YouTube performance. 

You’ve researched your brains out, you’ve started your channel, you’ve learned about what works with your audience, you’ve learned to shoot and edit video, and you feel like your videos are right up there with your strongest competitors, but you’re not getting the results they’re getting or the results you want quite yet. What to do? 

1. Know the road map
2. Be prolific
3. The hero video
4. Create More Emotional Reactions
5. Pivot

Know the Road Map

We talked about the road map earlier in the course, under our “How YouTube Works” section. Our experience in the kids + family space has taught us that it generally takes 6 to 12 months for a channel to pop up. Once it does, it will generate between $8k and $35kk per month. There are exceptions, of course. It could happen sooner for you. It could happen later as well. The point is, that though this can be a relatively short path to a sizable revenue stream for many, it’s not an overnight thing. You need to keep at it until the apple turns red, and that’s going to take months of regular, high-quality uploads. So keep that clock in your head as you move forward, and don’t be dissuaded from your goal of financial independence via YouTube creativity just yet. 

Be Prolific

Ira Glass, host of This American Life, a stellar public radio show, has something very timely to say about this. He talks about a taste gap - an obvious opening between what you know is great and what you can produce - and says that seeing this gap - that your art does not measure up to greatness yet - can be so intimidating that it can persuade you to quit. Instead, he recommends: 

“The most important possible thing you can do is do a lot of work — do a huge volume of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week, or every month, you know you’re going to finish one story. Because it’s only by actually going through a volume of work that you are actually going to catch up and close that gap.“

If you know you’re on track and you’ve been improving your videos steadily and faithfully, the first thing I’m going to tell you is to listen to Ira Glass. Make a ton of videos. He suggests it because he believes that by making tons of stuff - and trying to improve each time - you’re going to get better at your craft. And I agree with him. But I also believe that when it comes to the YouTube game, each video you post is another roll of the dice, another shot at a hit, another chance to quit your day job. So do it. Be prolific. Make tons of videos, each improving one upon the other, until one becomes a solid hit and gives you the kinds of results you were after all along.

The Hero Video

Let’s say you’ve been playing the YouTube game well for about 3-5 months now, and you have more than 20 videos up on your channel. You can tell YouTube knows you exist because you’re getting suggested views from a handful of other channels, but they’re not anything that’s going to change your life. Maybe what you need is a hero video. 

A hero video is a video that shows off your entertainment value generating skills in a big way. Often, it means upping your financial investment. In the kids’ skits world, it could mean finally dropping a few hundred bucks to make that scene with a Power Wheels Ferrarri happen. For a family vlog it may mean taking a vacation somewhere compelling and exotic. For a kids’ music channel it could mean buying your kids some simple instruments for the next video. 

We suggest this because if you’ve established some videos and you’re getting a few recommended views here and there, you’re in a prime spot. If you up the entertainment value and production value of your next video, that could make the difference between another three months of waiting and the best two weeks of your life. A hero video will introduce people to your style, your characters, and your storytelling, with some next level quality, and can be the boost you’re looking for. 

Add or Intensify Emotional Reactions

In our “How to get and keep viewers” section, we talked about the importance of creating emotional reactions in your viewers. Odds are, as you’ve made your videos, you’ve found a few that you’re pretty good at. Let’s say, for instance, that you tend to focus on excitement and disgust in your videos. One good way to try to break out of the incubation period and land your first hit video could be to add one more type of emotional engagement to your next video. Keep what you’re good at: excitement and gross factor, and add one more thing. Maybe it’s a values connection with parents, or maybe it’s a bit of cuteness from your youngest child. Whatever it is, adding it could be the boost you’re looking for. 

Another possibility is to deepen the emotional engagement on a single front. Are you trying to make a scary video for halloween? Turn your entire house into a haunted house! Go all out on costumes and make-up! Make your engagement on the fright front epic, undeniable, unstoppable! Are you trying to engage people on the cute front? Go all out! Find friends with ultra-cute babies and do a baby aerobics video. Dress them up like tiny adults and film their faces until you can’t even handle the cuteness yourself. Don’t pull punches. Let ‘em rip! Intensifying your work on one emotional front could be the thing you need. 

Pivot

If you’re making tons of toy unboxing videos and you’re getting no views after a few months, it may be time to pivot and try another kind of video. Maybe a skit? Doing this can be a challenge, because over the first few months of engagement you’ve found your stride and developed some habits that you’ll have to abandon if you begin making another type of video, but it may be what you need in order to bring some life to your channel. 

Remember, if you want to make money from YouTube advertising, you need to think about this like a business. If you’ve tried something again and again and again and it just isn’t working, you need to try something else. Try to give your future audience something that will engage them, and don’t quit pivoting until you find something that works. 

YouTube is a great place for creators to make and share videos and make money while doing it. In order to keep it a great place, YouTube has a body of rules and guidelines you’ll need to be familiar with and follow. When YouTube’s team or algorithm detects a rule-breaking video or channel, they take punitive measures that could seriously hurt your channel’s performance and future on the platform. In order to keep your channel healthy and strong, make sure you learn and follow the rules. 

The first and most important body of rules you should know about are YouTube’s community guidelines. Click the link below to visit their guidelines page and look through it yourself. 

https://www.youtube.com/yt/about/policies/#community-guidelines  

It’s divided into sections, which you should go through in detail. They’ll tell you what YouTube means when they say the prohibit: 

• Nudity or sexual content
• Harmful or dangerous content
• Hateful content
• Violent or graphic content
• Harrassment and cyberbullying
• Spam, misleading metadata, and scams
• Threats
• Copyright
• Privacy
• Impersonation
• Child endangerment

And more. 

If you’re considering becoming a professional YouTube creator, we strongly recommend you read through all of this material. Yes, it is a little long, but when it comes to the rules, an education goes a long way. 

A second resource YouTube has made available specifically for people creating family-friendly content is their “Creating for Youtube Kids field guide. Click below to begin studying it.

 https://www.youtube.com/yt/family/

It’s full of very specific tips and guidelines aimed straight at you, the family-friendly creator. 

It posts great, specific questions, such as “Would your characters be kind to a shy 3-year-old?” Or “Will it cause nightmares?” These are things you should keep in mind whenever you publish a new video, and this handy document makes some checklists available for just that purpose. Using these will help you keep your videos age-appropriate and YouTube approved. 

Remember, it’s your job to know the rules. Dig through these documents. Learn what’s OK and what isn’t. It can be a matter of life or death for your channel. 

YouTube is a huge community made up of thousands of creators and millions of videos. You can imagine that enforcing the rules in a community this large poses unique challenges. YouTube has several ways of enforcing the rules, but perhaps the most common and powerful one are algorithms. 

Algorithms are computer programs that navigate YouTube’s massive library of content searching for videos that seemingly break community guidelines or kids content rules. Sometimes, this can get a bit messy. For example, in the last module, we talked about some specific questions in YouTube’s Kids Field Guide. One of the questions included in one of their handy checklists is “Will [your video] cause zombie eyes and a marked drop in IQ?”

As an adult and a creative person, you likely know what this means, but can you imagine how difficult it is for an algorithm to tell if your content is mind-numbing? It gets complicated. Sometimes, YouTube will say you’re breaking their rules with your video, and you’ll disagree. In these cases, we suggest you communicate with YouTube as best you can. There are several ways for you to reach out to YouTube. These vary according to the size of your channel. One of the most available options is to request a manual review for a demonetized video. Another is to reach out to YouTube via Creator Support. Finally, if you’re at about the 100k subscriber level or above, you may have a YouTube representative: an actual YouTube employee assigned to work with you and your channels.

So, how will you know if your channel or one of your videos is breaking a YouTube rule? First, YouTube may warn you. They may say that your video is “not suitable for all advertisers.”

Another way YouTube tells you you’ve broken a rule is by giving you a strike on your community guidelines or copyright status. 

YouTube may also de-monetize the videos they detect may be inappropriate. If they detect a pattern of inappropriate behavior on your channel, they may demonetize all videos. 

Finally, if YouTube sees a huge problem with your content, they may simply remove your channel. This would be tremendously frustrating, and can cause damage to your library of content and your livelihood. This is the ultimate punishment. 

Whenever you notice any negative action against you on YouTube, it’s important for you to act quickly to try to resolve it. YouTube often gives you specific steps to follow. Do it. If you have the option of asking for a manual review, engage. If you can delete an offensive video to revisit it later, do it. You can take it off your channel, re-edit it to take out the potentially offensive stuff, and then re-upload. Repeat if necessary. Act quickly. If you don’t, it could lead to further punitive action by YouTube, and cause a world of hurt for your channel. 

As you become an active member of the YouTube community, you’ll notice that rules are not set in stone. YouTube is an evolving, growing community that faces new challenges periodically. As the community’s needs evolve, so will the rules. It is your job as a creator to review the rules regularly and ensure your videos abide by them. 

This process of evolution can get messy at times. There will be periods of time when YouTube is beginning to adapt to new community needs or issues, but their approach isn’t documented yet. This means they’ve found a community problem and are responding to it by demonetizing or deleting material, but they haven’t written specific rules about the community problem. This puts you in a difficult place as a creator, with changing expectations you’re not informed about. In the kids’ space, the end of 2017 was a time like this. Many large channels were eliminated and thousands of videos were demonetized or deleted in what many creators called kidpocalypse. 

When the YouTube community goes through a confusing stage like this, it’s important to communicate. Do everything you can to reach out to YouTube through all means at your disposal. Additionally, talk to other creators in your niche. Often, you can find more insight together than you can on your own. Most importantly, hold on tight through these disorienting periods. You’ll need to give YouTube time to adjust to new threats and figure out new guidelines. If you stick around and weather the storm, you’ll be part of a better, stronger community.