The YouTube GIF Update And What It Means For YouTube Gamers

For those lucky enough to sign up for the YouTube GIF beta test, you should receive an email in the next couple days that looks like this:

If you receive this email, you and your fans can now create GIF highlights of your videos and share them on social media sites and in the comments!

To share your GIFS all you have to do is :

• Go to the video you want to create the GIF for
• Click on the Share button
• Choose the part of the video you want the GIF to have
• Add text
• Click Create GIF
• And voila!

On the right you can see what the editor looks right, and right next to that you can see what it looks like after you created the GIF. 

As you can see, you can share the picture using a direct link (like IMGUR). Or you can embed the picture into your blog post/website using an iFrame. The opportunities are endless!

You can take a look at a couple of the example GIFs at the end of the post, but now lets discuss how you can use them to help your channel, and what this update means for you.

How Does This Update Affect You?

The GIF update makes it easier for you and your fans to share the funniest, weirdest, and craziest parts of your video.

You should expect to have some GIFs in the comments where you look incredibly awkward, but you should also have some GIFs with highlights of your amazing gameplay.

This also makes the sharing of your videos easier and less intrusive. (Instead of sharing the whole video, you now can share the best parts of it instead.)

You can also run contests with your users to find the craziest/best GIF out of your video, thus improving retention and getting you higher in the search rankings.

How will you use this update to help your YouTube gaming channel?

Leave a response in the comments below!

A Couple Of Example GIFs

10 Definitive Steps To Becoming A Famous YouTube Gamer

Do you want to become famous on YouTube in a week? Do you play video-games and want to see millions of people watch your gameplay? Then you're in the right place!

Just follow the advice below to earn one million subs within a week of starting YouTube!

1. Record your videos with a phone and post them on YouTube from your phone. No one cares if you used DXtory or OBS to record and if your voice is studio quality. If they can tell which blurry pixel is what, you're good!
2. Stuff your titles, tags, and descriptions with popular YouTubers' names and new, popular video games! Don't forget to copy and paste your tags into the end of the description, and if the game has a Wikipedia article, copy and paste that in there too!
3. Don't allow comments on any of your videos. The people don't want to say anything about your videos, and who cares what they would say anyway? Responding to comments is a huge waste of time so just remove them completely!
4. Once you have at least one video posted, you can start growing your channel! All you have to do is go to iwantfreeyoutubesubs.com and order their 1,000,000 subs for $10,000 package, and their 10,000,000 views for $10,000 package. Wait, what? You don't have that kind of money? WHAT ARE YOU DOING TRYING TO BECOME A YOUTUBER THEN? Save up $20,000 and then you can become famous.
5. Go on freelancer.com and hire someone to post the link to your channel on 10,000 most popular videos on YouTube every day. Once you do that for 2 days, hire another person to spam message famous YouTubers and random people telling them to check out your channel!
6. Post 100 10 second videos every day, and buy at least 10,000 views for each video. You're almost famous now!
7. Hire someone to draw suggestive images and post them as your thumbnails. People won't be disappointed at all if they want porn but get gaming content.
8. Make daily rant videos about famous YouTubers talking about how terrible they are. Then post the links to the videos on that person's YouTube videos. (Hire someone to do it for you of course)
9. Go on forums and ask people how you can improve your channel and once they give you advice, rage at them and tell them that your channel is the best there has ever been.
10. PROFIT! Now that you're the most popular YouTube on Earth with billions of subscribers, it's time to hire some people to make videos for you, turn on AdSense, and watch the millions of dollars come in!
11. Bonus- Give me your YouTube Login and Password so I can do all of the above for you!

P.S. If you don't realize this is a sarcastic completely serious post, you should follow it step by step if you want to make sure that your gaming channel becomes successful!

Stop Constantly Checking Your Analytics!

He's staring into your soul! Don't check the analytics!

We all do it.
You're bored and there's nothing you want to do.  So what do you do? Check the analytics of your website, YouTube channel, or whatever other account you have.

Most of us know it's pointless to obsess over our statistics, and checking them more than once a day can actually hurt you and whatever you're analyzing. However many of us still check then constantly, in the hope that you earned one more subscriber, one more dollar, or one more view. 

Why is this so bad, and how can we do ourselves from doing it?

Read on to find out!

Why It's Bad
First of all, let's talk about why we check the analytics.
For most, it's this constant desire to see how we're doing at the moment and what happened while we didn't check the analytics.
It's this paranoid feeling that if you don't check the statistics now, it would be as if they didn't exist, or they'll disappear forever, and that all the work you've done will have been for naught.

You might cover it up by saying that you want to figure out how to improve the performance of your website or channel, or you might say that you want to see how it's doing after that one tiny change you made to it a while ago, but most of the time it'll be because of the italicized reason above.

Believe it or not, there is such a thing as over-analyzing, especially if you have a small website or YouTube channel because then your time should definitely be spent elsewhere (hint, hint, content creation).

Also, many people check the statistics without a purpose, thus not improving anything except possibly giving them a short warm and fuzzy feeling because they got a couple more visitors/subscribers.

We live in a culture of instant gratification, and checking the stats and being happy about about your performance is much easier (and feels much better) than banging out amazing content that will get you much more views.

If you haven't heard about the 80/20 rule, it basically means that 80 percent of your results will come from 20 percent of your effort /actions.

In most people's cases, the 20 percent they should focus on is creating amazing, in-depth content that people will want to share.

Easier said than done, right?

However the above idea is basically the Holy grail of Internet success.

You create better content than anyone else. 

You draw people in using that content, and you get then to share it, or subscribe to you so to get viewers that come back.

The 20 percent that you need to focus on is hard. But it'll yield much greater results than simply checking your analytics will do in the long run.

Now that we've figured out why it's so bad, let's work on changing it!

How To Stop Checking Analytics Constantly
Checking your statistics when you're bored is a habit, and like any habit it can be changed.

There are 3 steps to a habit :

1. Cue: I'm bored, let's check my analytics 
2. Routine: pull out phone/laptop, check statistics 
3. Reward: warm and fuzzy feeling because I got viewers.

Now to change this, you will need to know what your cues are. Whenever you notice yourself checking your analytics try to figure out how you felt and what you were doing before you loaded it up.
Write it down.
Over a week or so, a pattern should emerge.

Once you know what causes you to do it, you can work on changing your routine. 

Set up a routine to do when you're bored, so instead of checking your statistics you can read a blog about SEO or YouTube channel improvement (like this blog!), or something else you would consider useful.

It could be :

• Brainstorming ideas for videos, blog posts, etc... 
• Wiring a part of a cog blog post 
• Reading a blog 
• Checking the news 
• Learning a new language
• And many more.

After that, you will get to enjoy a warm and fuzzy feeling of learning something new, and/or improving your online business in the process.

Thank you for reading!

10 Reasons To Quit YouTube (And Why Your Excuses Suck)

Here are the 10 best reasons that will either convince you to stop making YouTube videos, or show that YouTube is something for you.

1. Your videos are terrible.
2. You will never succeed so why try?
3. There are so many other good videos out there. Mine will get lost in the search.
4. I'm starting my YouTube "career" way too late.
5. What's the point?
6. I don't have the right hardware to record.
7. I always have people distracting you from recording, so why bother?
8. It's just too much work.
9. My time is better spent elsewhere.
10. I don't know what to record.

If you're still with me, congratulations!

Now let's go through the 10 reasons for why the excuses above are complete and total bull.

1. There will always be people doing something better than you, but there always will be people doing it worse than you. If you persevere, you will get better!
2. It all depends on what you mean by success. If your goal is earning millions of dollars quickly, then YouTube isn't for you. However, if success means having a tight-know community who you can talk to and have fun with, while making some extra money, then that's reachable within a year if not more!
3. Check out this post. There are a lot of great videos, but some games also have almost no videos for them. It all depends on how you look at it, and what you're willing to record.
4. You have to start someday. Today is earlier than tomorrow ain't it?
5. What's the point of life? Or food? Or sleep? Or having fun?
6. Do you have a computer and a headset (for gaming), or a phone (for other videos)? If yes, then you're all set!
7. If you really can't get 10 minutes of alone time in your house, then make some cuts in your videos and record in short bursts!
8. Life is too much work man...
9. Possibly, yes! But isn't it always "better" to be doing something else?
10. That is problematic... ANYTHING! You can record. Play. Do. ANYTHING! 

Thank you guys for reading my top 10 reasons for quitting YouTube (and the reasons for why the excuses are absolutely terrible).

If you have any excuses of your own, please post them in the comments!