Creators A Complete Guide to Youtube Studio
Youtube is a treasure trove of information for all interests, topics, industries, and vocations. Whether you’re teaching, entertaining, informing, or just having fun producing videos, you want your videos to not only look their best and sound amazing, but perform well, too!
Let’s get you acquainted with YouTube’s built-in video production suite and control hub: YouTube Studio. This is where you manage your videos, your analytics, your community—your, well, everything.
Here, we’ll give you a detailed rundown of all the parts of YouTube Studio to make sure that you’re well equipped to start your YouTube career strong!
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Parts of Youtube Studio
So, you’ve created your YouTube creator account and are ready to start getting your content out into the world. There are countless ways to take advantage of the many features of YouTube Studio. Let’s go over all the details to make sure you’re well equipped on your journey to YouTube success!
YouTube Dashboard
First, let’s look at your YouTube Dashboard. Your YouTube dashboard is the central hub of your creator space on YouTube. It’s also where you’ll find a breakdown of all your data, including notifications, subscribers, what’s new, and many other features.
News
The news tab is where you’ll find general YouTube updates. Keep an eye on this tab to make sure you’re up to date with any new guidelines, trends, features, or topics that could help your YouTube career.
Known Issues
The Known Issues tab is a hub for any large-scale issues, like glitches or bugs, that are affecting many YouTube creators. Here, you can keep up to date on what’s being done about these problems and what to look out for should you start experiencing the same issues.
What’s New in Studio
This tab is a rundown of all the new tools and features made for creators to use in YouTube Studio. These features can help you create better content more easily, so it’s always a great idea to pay attention to this tab. If you’re confused or just curious about a new feature, here’s where you’ll find a breakdown on how to use it.
Latest Video Performance
Keeping track of your channel’s performance is vital to a successful YouTube career. This analytic preview gives you recent insights as to how your most recent video is doing at a glance.
Latest Comments
Community engagement is also very important for any content creator. Under this tab, you’ll find the latest comments on your videos, ready for you to reply to.
Latest Post
The Latest Post tab is only viewable if you’re approved for the Community tab and make Community posts. Here, you can see how well your latest post is doing.
Channel Analytics
Your channel analytics gives you a simple breakdown of all of your recent activity, including views, subscribers, and watch time for the last 28 days. Top videos and current subscribers are also displayed on this tab. We’ll go over this in further detail in just a moment.
Recent Subscribers
While it’s labeled “recent” subscribers, this tab actually shows you all of your subscribers. However, you can choose various timeframes to see how many subscribers you gained in a week, a month, etc. This can help you narrow down what times are best for you to post and what kinds of videos seem to be pulling in the most new subscribers.
Creator Insider
Creator Insider is a YouTube channel run by the YouTube Creator Technical Team to share information with YouTube creators.
The videos on this channel help YouTube creators by explaining various changes that YouTube is making, how to work with it, and what products work well with YouTube to make your videos even better.
Keep in mind that while this is run by the YouTube Creator Technical Team and featured by Youtube on your Channel Dashboard, it is an experimental channel, and not officially affiliated with Youtube.
Ideas For You
The Ideas For You tab is a curated collection of information that can help you run your channel. Ideas and suggestions tailored to you and your channel will pop up here.
Important Notifications
The Important Notifications tabs are notifications regarding monetization and copyright monitoring. Currently, notifications regarding your AdSense account and “advertiser friendliness manual review results” do not appear in this tab. YouTube is actively working on adding these notifications to the Important Notifications tab.
Monetization
Monetization notifications let you know if your channel is or is not eligible for monetization. This notification tab will also alert you if your monetization status changes.
Copyright
Here, you’ll find notifications regarding any copyright strikes or claims that have popped up on your videos.
Channel Violations
Hopefully, you won’t have to visit this tab too often, but here is where you’ll find any warnings that pop up in response to your content. This includes community guidelines, violations, and appeals.
The content you get through freelance voice actors, audio producers, and others on Voices is original to you and tailored to your needs rather than using audio content that is already out there. Sometimes it’s hard to tell what is and isn’t in the public domain. Bringing voice over artists, translation services, and other audio production services to the table can help you get around possible copyright flags.
Sometimes content can also get accidentally flagged, so it’s always a good idea to keep an eye on this tab even if you know you’re complying with all of YouTube’s rules and guidelines.
Content
The content tab in YouTube Studio is simply a rundown of your videos and live streams. This gives you a good view of all of your content and makes it easy to keep track of topics you’ve already covered.
Playlists
Playlists are a great way to organize your content. If you’re a gamer, you can add all the parts of your different play-throughs to their own playlists. If you’re a musician, you can organize your music by genre, instrument, etc.
You can create and manage your playlists in this tab as well as manage privacy settings, share your playlists, and even embed them on other web pages.
YouTuber Amy Landino spoke at length about the many advantages that YouTube Playlists pose for your YouTube career. These advantages boil down to more views, channel organization for you, and easy navigation for your viewers if they’re only interested in one or two specific topics you cover.
If international accessibility is important to you, you could even upload different versions of your videos with a voice over translation to its own designated playlist!
Analytics
Like all things, YouTube Studio has gone through a few reincarnations. The first beta of YouTube Studio was introduced in June of 2017 before being fully released in March of 2018.
This revamped version of the original Creator Studio introduced many of the features that we’ve talked about above. One of the biggest features is analytics, including how and what information is being displayed.
Since the update, creators went from basic YouTube channel analytics to detailed information like impressions (every time someone sees one of your video thumbnails), unique views versus returning views, and your click-through rate (impressions that have become views).
Our own in-house Content Producer, Randy Rector, has weighed in on the changes as well.
“In my opinion, I think the biggest updates—and the ones I found most helpful—are the new features in analytics like the comparison metrics. There are some other features, like audience retention graphs, the “other videos your audience watched” tool, and the returning vs. unique viewers graph, that are also useful.”
Comments
Comments are also part of your analytics. In the comments tab, you can set certain standards for your community like blocking certain words, restricting comments, and holding comments in review before you approve them.
This is a great tool to use if you want to keep your channel kid-friendly, or even keep it free of vulgar language or discourse if you’re using your channel for professional reasons.
Mentions
Mentions on YouTube, once you’re eligible to use them, are a great networking tool and allow you to plug other YouTubers in the description of your videos. If you want to catch someone’s attention or credit another creator, mentioning them will ensure that your video pops up in their notifications.
Subtitles
While YouTube has been offering automatically generated subtitles since 2009, creator-made subtitles have only been part of YouTube Studio since 2021. User-generated subtitles submitted by the community were a great boon until they were mixed in 2020. Since then, creators have been making their own subtitles and adding them into the caption editor that is part of YouTube Studio.
Subtitles are an incredibly important mode of accessibility to many people with ADHD, various audio-processing and learning disorders, and most obviously, those who are deaf and hard of hearing.
YouTuber Ahmed Khalifa of Hear Me Out! posted a video back in 2018 detailing 15 reasons why subtitles are vital for YouTube creators and viewers alike:
“One big benefit of captions is SEO or Search Engine Optimisation, and this is where you want to get your content found on Google and people have access to that content just by searching on Google. Make sure you’re ranking high, and they get to visit your blog, your videos, whatever it is.”
YouTube Video Manager
If you’re still partial to the way the older version of YouTube Creator Studio worked, you’re not the only one. Because so many people still like some of the features of the old version, you have the option to use Creator Studio Classic. This is where you’ll find the original YouTube Video Manager.
The YouTube Video Manager allows you to edit your videos and add subtitles through the old interface if that’s what you’re more comfortable with.
Monetization
If you’re using your YouTube channel to showcase your content and build a following, why not make a few bucks while doing it? As of August 2021, Youtube has added a plethora of ways for creators to make money with their content.
To be eligible for the YouTube Partner Program, you must have 4,000 hours of public watch time and at least 1,000 subscribers. Let’s go over a few ways to monetize your channel!
Ads
Ads are probably the most well-known way to make money on YouTube. To make money like this, in addition to being eligible for the YouTube Partner Program, you also have to be based in a country where this feature is available and link your AdSense account to your YouTube channel.
Super Chat/Super Stickers/Super Thanks
Super Chats, Super Stickers, and Super Thanks are great for creators who want to cultivate a community with their work. Viewers can buy Super Chats, Super Stickers, and Super Thanks to stand out in the chat during your live streams. If you like doing Q&A videos, this is a great way for viewers to make sure their questions stand out.
Memberships
Memberships work a little like Patreon in the sense that you can offer different monthly membership tiers at different prices in exchange for exclusive content for those members.
Customization
One of the most important things to do when setting up a YouTube channel is to make sure you’re properly branded. The customization tools in YouTube studio help make your YouTube channel unique.
In the customizations tab, you can change everything from your channel trailer to your video watermark to make sure that your channel stands out from the rest.
Audio Library
The YouTube Audio Library is a lifesaver when you’re looking for some epic music to add to the background of your latest fantasy-themed video. The Audio Library is where you can find royalty-free music and sound effects to add to your videos.
Conclusion
All in all, YouTube Studio is an amazing tool for producing beautiful, accessible, quality videos for your Youtube Channel.
These tools aren’t the only ones you’ll need, though. If you’re looking for high-quality translation services, voice over artists, or audio production services for your YouTube channel, sign up for an account on Voices today to see how freelance talent take content creators’ videos to the next level.
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