Your YouTube thumbnail can literally make or break your video's performance, regardless if you've done it yourself or you outsource it to someone else.
Luckily for you, I am someone who has done both.
And in this video I'm going to show you my personal process on how I make my thumbnails, whether I am doing it myself or outsourcing it to someone else.
Now this is part five of my six part YouTube series, where I show the entire behind the scenes of how I bring my videos to life.
So in case you missed it, make sure you catch up afterwards by watching this playlist here.
Now, without further ado, let's dive into thumbnail making.
Now, before I design any type of thumbnail, I first look for thumbnail inspiration.
I typically do this by looking at my homepage, my search page, for the specific topic that I'm talking about.
And also the YouTube inspiration tab within my YouTube analytics.
I really like using this tab because it allows me to see the other videos that you guys are watching and that you guys are clicking on, so that I can compare and see what type of thumbnail I might create for myself.
Now, to be honest, how I decide what type of thumbnail to recreate or get inspiration from is really personal preference.
I kind of just look at what captures my attention.
And so that's kind of how I narrow it down.
And then what I'll do is I screenshot the inspiration and then put it inside my notion planner.
And, by the way, if you want a copy of my notion planner, you can check it out in the description box or in the comment section below.
Next, what I try to do is before I filmed the video, while I still have good lighting.
I will then take a video of different poses that I might want to do for my thumbnail.
And the reason why I do this is because later on, I will then go to my computer and take screenshots of the different frames within the video that I like.
I personally find this to be a lot easier than taking individual photos.
One helpful tip too is, as you're taking screenshots of the different poses that you like, have a separate folder on the side as your thumbnail library, so that in the future you can look back at previous poses that you've done.
This is really helpful if you need to make thumbnails really quickly or you want to save some time and you don't necessarily want to redo this whole thumbnail taking process.
Now, once I have all the poses and screenshots that I like, I will then select all of them, open them all at once.
And on my Mac book.
I'll then be able to compare all the different poses at once and kind of narrow down which ones are my favorite.
Once I selected my favorites.
If I'm making the thumbnail myself, I will then head over to Canva and upload it into a project that I have, which houses all of the thumbnails that I've created so far.
Now that I've uploaded the poses onto Canva, I want to show you how I made this thumbnail, because all the steps I took are pretty much the same steps that I take for all the thumbnails that I make myself.
And so the first step that I do is I will pick the pose that I think has the most potential.
In my case, it's this one.
And then I will, Fill up the screen.
And as you can see, the original color of this photo is quite dull.
And so what I will do is I will click edit and then hit adjust and then increase the saturation.
I will sometimes also play with the brightness and maybe also the contrast.
So it ends up looking like this.
The next step that I then do is I will hit edit again.
And I use my most favorite tool on Canva, which is the magic grab tool.
Now, what the magic grab tool does is it basically takes your body and it removes it from the background.
So as you can see, it's selected my body, but I also have this laptop as well.
So I'm going to click on the laptop.
Once you've decided what exactly you want to grab from the picture, you then click grab, and then you wait a couple seconds.
Now what you can do is you can actually move your body wherever you would like on the screen.
And so let's say if I wanted to put text on the side, I can do that.
Or let's say if I want to enlarge my whole body, I can do that as well.
Now for this thumbnail.
Specifically, I decided to make myself a little bit bigger to take up more space.
And then I kept myself in the middle.
But alternatively, what I could have done is I could have also put myself to the sides and put the text on the side as well.
Now, a little rule of thumb that I typically like to follow is over on YouTube.
There will typically be a timestamp on the bottom right-hand side.
And so that is typically where I avoid putting any text.
And so if I were to put text on this, I typically like to put it on the left hand side.
But for some reason, for this specific thumbnail, I decided to switch it up and do something different.
Now, once I've done the magic grab feature, the next step that I typically take is I go to my second favorite feature, which is shadows.
You click shadows and then you can click outline, and then you're going to be able to add an outline around your body.
Now I like using a white outline, and then I will just make the size a little bit smaller.
But you can definitely play with this however you'd like.
Alternatively, you can also use the glow feature right here, change your shadow to black and then really play with the sizing.
I find that this also creates a nice dimension to your thumbnail and it allows your body to kind of pop out of the picture.
But for me personally, I really liked the outline feature.
So I'm going to stick with that.
Now, the next step is to put text on your thumbnail.
And for this very reason is why I put all of my thumbnails in the same Canva file, because I'm able to copy and paste past thumbnails that I've done.
And so for me, what I would do is let's say I really liked this thumbnail that I made.
I would then just copy the title, go back down to the thumbnail that I'm making and then paste it, and then, you know, adjust it for the video.
But in your case, if you are someone who is doing thumbnails for the first time, then what you would do is you want to click this text button and then add a text box.
Then you're going to want to find a font that you like using.
Now, personally, for me, my favorite fonts is bartender and also Bobby Jones.
So let me use the Bobby Jones font.
I'm going to make my font white, and then I'm also going to increase the size.
So let's say font size 100.
Now the next thing that I want to do with my font is to really make it pop out on the screen.
And so I will click on it, then click effects.
And then my favorite feature is lift.
Lift creates this drop shadow almost so that your font can really pop out of the screen.
You can also use other effects, such as outline, which then adds an outline to your text, or you can also create shadows as well.
You just have to kind of change the colors and play with it.
Now, in my case for this thumbnail, I really like the lift look, so I'm going to do that.
But also another thing that I want to do is I kind of want to create a curve for the text.
So down over on shape, I'm going to click curve and then I'm going to play with how curvy this font becomes.
Now going back to the magic grab feature that I really like.
It's really awesome because, if you wanted to, you could also put the text behind your body.
And this can be a really helpful effect, depending on the thumbnail, because it creates a lot more dimension.
But in my case for this thumbnail specifically, I'm just going to put it back in the front.
Now the next step is really deciding what I want my text to say.
And I find this to be the most challenging part.
So oftentimes, I will look back at my thumbnail inspiration and I will also play around with the different types of options that I'm thinking of.
So, for example, for this video, I was going to name it how I plan videos get more video ideas.
Best planning system easy YouTube planning.
And so as you can see, I really played around with the text.
Now, if you are someone who struggles with figuring out what exact text to put in the thumbnail, here's my best advice to you.
Use ChatGPT.
For example, this is what I said to ChatGPT.
Can you give me 10 different options for the text I could put in my thumbnail photo?
Ideally it should be less than five words and captures enough intrigue for people to click on the video.
I then gave ChatGPT what the title of my video is and also the script that I wrote out prior.
Now, ChatGPT gave me some decent results, but then I asked ChatGPT a follow-up question, which is what are some better prompts that I can ask you to get better thumbnail text results?
And then ChatGPT gave me a list of questions that I could ask it to get a better result.
And so I used one of them, which was what would make a beginner YouTuber intrigued by this thumbnail.
Immediately, ChatGPT gave me way better text results that are more specific to my video.
Next, I used another prompt that ChatGPT suggested, which was suggest bold or contrarian thumbnail text that challenges viewers assumptions about thumbnails.
And then ChatGPT gave me results for that.
And so the key here is you want to give ChatGPT context of your video and then afterwards let ChatGPT help you by giving you what better question to ask it, so that you can get more tailored results.
Now, just for the sake of copying what I've done, I'm going to change this to easy video ideas or something like that.
And then I can adjust the size accordingly.
Now afterwards, I may add some graphics or icons as necessary.
And so what I would do here is I would go on elements.
And in this case I really wanted to show a YouTube icon to really showcase that this is a video about YouTube.
I will click on all the graphics and then I will pick the one that I like.
I do pay for Canva and I do think it's well worth it so that you can have access to the pro features.
But I will click on that and then same thing.
I will then go on edit and I'm able to do the same type of outline effects that I did for my body.
So, for example, I can add a black outline if I wanted to.
I can add a drop and then increase the intensity of that.
And so I believe that's kind of what I did for this one right here.
I can play around with the positioning and again, because we did the magic grab feature, I can put it right here and then put my body on top of the icon, so it's kind of behind my body.
Now for this video specifically, i really wanted to show some social proof in my thumbnail, and so i basically took a screenshot of how many subscribers i've gained since starting my channel, and i did the same process by uploading it into canva and then adding an outline and then playing around with the actual rotation of it.
Now, once you've played around with your thumbnail, the next thing that I typically do is I zoom out as small as possible to kind of see how my thumbnail would look like on mobile.
And if I'm playing around with different variations of the thumbnail, I will then compare which thumbnail catches my eye the most.
Now in my case, I really like easy video ideas or get more video ideas.
Now get more video ideas is the one that I ended up picking.
And so what I would do next is I would zoom back in, and then I would take a screenshot of the chosen one.
Now, once I've taken a screenshot of the thumbnail that I think is the winner, what I have here in one of the pages on this project is I actually have a mock-up of my channel.
So let me show you really quickly what that looks like.
It's this one right here.
I will then take that screenshot that I took of my potential winner and then I will mock it up over on my channel to see what it would look like and how it compares to other thumbnails that I've created in the past.
I find this really helpful because you can now compare how your thumbnail looks like relative to other thumbnails you made in the past.
Maybe your thumbnail is not bright enough, or maybe it's too similar to ones you've created in the past and you want to break the pattern.
This is really helpful before you actually commit and upload your thumbnails.
Now something I also really like doing, depending on the thumbnail I didn't necessarily do it for this one is because we did the magic grab feature.
You can also change the background color without changing the thing that you grab.
So, for example, if I wanted the background to be a different color or less saturated so that my actual body stands out more, I can do that.
Or another thing that I've done in the past is I will take a rectangle and then I will widen it out and then I will adjust the transparency, then i will take it and put it to the back, and then i'll take the original background and then put it behind that, and that way it kind of creates this little tint that i can play around with, and so it allows me to kind of control how much of my text or my body or the graphics that i want to stand out relative to the actual background that i have.
Now, as you can see, making your own thumbnails doesn't have to be that hard, especially if you're using Canva and leveraging the tools that I mentioned.
But if you are someone who doesn't have a lot of time to make your own thumbnails and you have a little bit of money to spend, I'm going to show you how I outsource thumbnail creation.
I'm able to find people really quickly at an affordable price and with a quick turnaround time.
So let's talk about it.
Now, when it comes to outsourcing most things for my YouTube channel and for my business, the number one place that I like going to is Upwork.
I've been using Upwork for years.
And in fact, I use it even more now that I'm a solopreneur.
And so what I want you to do is create an Upwork account first and foremost.
And then in the search bar right here, I want you to click on projects.
Then I want you to type in YouTube thumbnail.
What you're going to find is you're going to find a lot of people that are willing to do thumbnails, and most times for a really affordable price as low as 15 per thumbnail.
And a lot of times the turnaround time is within a day.
So if you are uploading a video in the next couple of days, this is a really great resource to tap into.
Obviously there are a lot of people to choose from.
And so what you're going to want to do is creep around and look at people's portfolios and see if it actually is your vibe.
There is a huge variety of different types of thumbnails that you can create.
So you basically want to find a freelancer that matches the aesthetic that you're looking for.
Now, obviously the one day delivery isn't for every single freelancer.
Like these ones are one day deliveries, but some people might take longer, like four days.
And so you just want to be careful with your expectations.
Personally for me, when I'm looking for someone to do my thumbnails, not only am I looking at whether or not they can do the aesthetic that I'm looking for, but I'm also looking at their rating and how many people have worked with them.
One word of caution is sometimes there's freelancers that will say that they've worked on someone's channel when they actually haven't.
And so projects is a really low stakes way to at least test someone out before committing.
There have been times where I've hired a freelancer and they don't actually deliver on what their portfolio said that they could do.
And so you just want to be careful, but luckily this is pretty affordable.
And the most that you're going to miss out on is maybe 15 to 20%.
20, which I find is not a huge loss considering the fact that the upside is much greater, and it's far better than signing a contract and committing to someone in the longterm.
But anyways, once there's a freelancer that you really like, you just want to double check on the delivery time, how many revisions that you can get, the number of thumbnails that you're going to receive and all the little details.
Once you're happy with it, you can then click continue and from there you can fund the project.
Now it doesn't necessarily mean that you're paying right away.
It just allows upwork to hold money in escrow and then, once the project is completed, the freelancer will then get paid.
Now, because i'm I'm just showing this to you for the sake of the video.
I'm not going to actually fund this project, but typically what happens is afterwards you're going to be able to fill out a questionnaire that the freelancer will ask, such as what type of vibe you want for your thumbnail, what specific text you want for your thumbnail, and also you attaching any poses or additional images that you want in your actual thumbnail.
Sometimes the freelancers will also ask you to link the video that you filmed so that they can get more context on what your video is about, but not all freelancers do this.
It really depends on the person.
After that, once you've initiated the project, the freelancer will reach out to you with the first draft of your thumbnail.
And then from there, you're able to message them back and forth on the edits.
So as you can see with this freelancer, we went back and forth quite a bit.
And then once I was happy with it, I then ended the contract and paid him.
Now in my YouTube career in the last six years, I think that I have outsourced more thumbnails than I've actually created myself.
And this is because graphic design is not my strong suit, but I also really value my time.
And typically I just don't have a lot of time to make thumbnails.
And if, If you really think about it, for 15 a thumbnail.
If you upload four videos a month, which is one video a week, you're spending about 60 a month on thumbnails.
It seems like a lot, but if you are monetized on YouTube and you're making money based on how many views you get and your thumbnails are attracting more people to watch your videos, you could be earning hundreds, if not thousands, thanks to having a good thumbnail.
That being said though, to manage your expectations on costs, if you are someone who is obsessed with AB testing, then you're going to find yourself spending a lot more on thumbnails because you're going to want to have different variations of the thumbnail that you're going to need to test.
Now, if you're someone who doesn't need advanced A-B testing, you can actually A-B test thumbnails for free in the YouTube studio.
But if you are someone who wants to have more data, I highly recommend doing the legend license on TubeBuddy.
Again, my code is in the description box below if you'd like 20 off all TubeBuddy licenses.
But either way, thumbnails do play a huge role as to whether or not someone clicks your videos, but it is not the only reason on why you get views, which is why in my next video, which is the last video of this six part YouTube series, I'm going to show you the different strategies that I used to get more views on my YouTube videos.
Now, if that video is ready, you're gonna be able to watch it right here, but if you do not see it yet, it just means I haven't posted it.
So make sure you hit the notification bell and stay subscribed.
As always, guys, I appreciate you, and I will see you in this video.
Bye, guys, and take care.
