If you make content on this platform, it is impossible to ignore YouTube Shorts. And so in this video, we're going to give you the complete guide on how to make them in just five minutes. Here are the basics.
YouTube Shorts must be 60 seconds or less in length. As for aspect ratio, well viewers watch YouTube Shorts on one of these, so it's vertical portrait videos. Aim for an aspect ratio of 9 by 16. You can go as wide as a square format, but the more you do this, the bigger these black bars at the top and the bottom are, which is wasted space.
Absolutely anyone can create YouTube Shorts. Zero views, zero subscribers. start your channel today and get creating.
You can make shorts through the dedicated tool on the YouTube mobile app or create them using your own video editor, say on a computer. When you upload the video to YouTube, it will automatically detect that the video is a short. There are loads of ways to access YouTube shorts these days, such as on the homepage under the short section, in the subscription feed, on a channel's homepage, by searching on YouTube for shorts on a specific topic, by typing in hashtag shorts in the YouTube search bar and in the dedicated shorts tab, beside the home tab at the bottom of the YouTube app.
And many of these are replicated in the desktop experience of YouTube. YouTube reports over 50 billion shorts are watched every single day. So for creators, that's a big opportunity.
To create a short within the app, tap on the plus button at the top of the screen and then create short. This big red button obviously records footage. And as you do this, a red meter fills at the top of the screen.
This is how much record time you have left. You can record as many clips as you want and if you need more than 15 seconds tap here to give yourself 60 seconds of recording time. This undo button will remove the last clip you recorded and over on the right hand side you have tons of creative features such as timers, green screens, effects and filters. YouTube are constantly adding to this so play around with it.
You can add popular music and sound to your shorts through this button at the top of the screen. You can search for what you need preview it and then add it directly to the footage as you record it. If you use this feature, your short will not receive any copyright claims, which means that you can monetize the short once you're in the YouTube Partner Program. You can also add clips from your phone to the YouTube Short, but if these clips have licensed music in them, they may get copyright claimed because you didn't add them through YouTube's built-in tools.
This X button will allow you to delete the short completely or save for later and a tick in the bottom right hand corner will take you to the next stage. where you can do a bit more editing. For example, if you want to add text to the short, you can type it out here and then tap on timeline to drag and trim the text so that it displays only when you need it to.
There are a couple more features you can play around with here, but ultimately you'll be tapping on next in the top right-hand corner of the screen to take you to the upload page. Starting with a title, this is perhaps the most important part of your short's SEO. So make sure it's searchable or incredibly intriguing and keep it to 40 characters or less if you can. That will stop the title from getting cut off when people see it on YouTube. Next to this is an image with a pencil icon.
This is where you can kind of select a thumbnail. It will allow you to scrub the timeline of a shot and choose a single frame that represents your thumbnail. What you can't do is upload a custom thumbnail, unless you use this cheeky hack linked in the top right hand corner of the screen.
Shorts remixing allows any creator to use the audio from your video and the video too if you agree to it. We'll come back to that later. And we always recommend uploading any content to YouTube, unlisted or private, just so that YouTube can process it properly and you can check it.
When you're ready, it's time to upload. So those are the very basics of how a creator makes a YouTube short. And if you find in this tutorial valuable, make sure to subscribe. But what about the viewer's perspective?
How do they interact with a YouTube short? Well, the truth is very, very quickly. Users can swipe through a lot of shorts because it's so easy to do. You can also do all of the usual stuff, such as likes, comments, and shares. The description box is hidden away a little bit behind three dots at the top right hand corner of the screen and an extra tap.
So as a pro tip, make sure to use the pinned comments to add your own calls to action. This box in the bottom right hand corner is the audio source for the YouTube shot. If the add sound feature was used that we showed earlier, then it would be listed here. Otherwise it's original audio from the YouTube shot that anyone can take and use on their video or use a remix tool and potentially use the audio and video as part of their own YouTube Shorts.
For traditional creators protective of their content this might seem a little scary, but everybody who makes YouTube Shorts agrees to these rules. Analytics do exist for YouTube Shorts and they have their own dedicated section in the YouTube Studio. It's a pretty comprehensive collection of data and you can view it both on desktop and on mobile.
And now for the only question that really matters, can you make money from YouTube Shorts? Yes, yes you can. If you only make shorts on YouTube, your requirements are 1000 subscribers and 10 million YouTube Shorts views over the last 90 days. You don't need to track watch hours at all. Having said that, if you do get 4000 watch hours from long form content, you can monetize YouTube Shorts as well.
But here's the catch, CPMs are tiny for Shorts compared to long form content. You will need tens of millions of views to earn hundreds of dollars. Perfect timing.
If you found this video useful, don't forget to subscribe to vidIQ and hit the bell icon. Thanks for watching. because we talk about YouTube Shorts all of the time, such as these 36 hacks that are proven to get you tons of views.