Are 3 minute Shorts the secret source to growing your YouTube channel, or is it just a fleeting trend?
In the video below, you’ll learn the pros and cons of making these bite-sized videos,
share comments from my subscribers and give my recommendations.
Use vertical or square aspect ratios
You have the ability to create a YouTube Short using the vertical dimensions of 1920 pixels high by 1080 pixels wide, or the square dimensions of 1080 pixels high and 1080 pixels wide. Both aspect ratios will give you a YouTube short. This means you can easily create a Short on your mobile phone using a YouTube app while you’re away from your computer.
The drawback is you currently cannot create 3 minute Shorts using the Shorts camera on the YouTube app. This means you’ll have to upload a YouTube Short using YouTube studio on your desktop computer.
Keep in mind if you upload a rectangular or horizontal video with a aspect ratio of 16:9,
it’ll be published as a long form video, not as a Short.
Comment below if you think 3 minute Shorts are worth your time and effort.
More flexibility to tell your story
Have you ever tried to tell a good story in less than a minute? Usually, it takes longer than 1 minute to tell a good story, so you have to trim down the video to make it into a Short. Now, you no longer have to trim your content to keep it under 1 minute.
Here’s a comment from one of my subscribers…
“For me, the only advantage I can imagine at this moment is that when I have a message that takes me just over a minute to get the point across, I no longer have to stress about which few seconds to cut out in order to trim the message down to under 59 seconds.”
Here’s another comment…
“Absolutely. It’s helpful, especially for people making daily vlogs or cooking tutorials.”
Making a 3 minute Short video gives you more flexibility to tell your story.
Make video creation easier and more fun.
If you want to reuse a Short, you can easily recreate the magic using templates. All you have to do is tap remix for a video that inspires you, then tap “use this template”. You’ll be able to remix clips from your favorite videos, music videos, and even be able to pull from multiple clips across YouTube.
The drawback is that remixing is limited to 60 seconds for the time being. Shorts creation tools currently don’t support making 3 minute Shorts videos. These will be rolled out in the future.
Repurpose your Long Form videos by sharing them with your Shorts viewers
so you can attract a different audience.
Simply go to the watch page of your longform video, then tap remix, then tap edit into a Short. This will allow you to create a new short from your longform video. You can even save it as a draft if you want to work on it later.
You’ll be able to link from your long form video to your Short using the Related Links feature. When a viewer clicks on a link they’ll be redirected to your long form video, resulting in more views to your channel.
Keep in mind, Shorts that are over 60 seconds that use copyrighted audio or visuals will be blocked and also be unplayable or recommended across YouTube. If that happens, you can still remove the claimed content from your Short to make it playable. To avoid getting content ID claims on shorts videos that are over 1 minute, use the royalty free music from YouTube’s audio library.
Reply to comments with a Short
When you reply to a comment with a Short, it’ll let the commenter know by showing up in the comment feed below the original comment.
Go to the watch page of your Shorts
Tap on your comments.
Select your comment,
Tap reply icon
Tap the camera icon.
Now you’ll see the comment actually on the screen that you can reply to in a Short.
“Thanks very much for your comment”
And here’s my Shorts reply that shows up below the original comment.
The drawback is that remixing is currently limited to 60 seconds while
YouTube is rolling out the new Shorts creation tools.
Growth opportunity
Most shorts videos are discovered in the Shorts feed while people are scrolling their phones using the YouTube app. They can also be discovered on YouTube Search, Google Search, recommended on your channel homepage, YouTube’s homepage, and also the watch next pages.
This means you can get a ton of traffic from all these locations where your Shorts videos appear resulting in the fast growth of your channel.
For example, this Shorts video currently ranks on the first page of YouTube search as well as Google search. It’s received 85,000 views since it was published and still gets over 448 views every 48 hours. This means the traffic is contributing to the growth of my channel. The drawback is that it takes time for your Shorts videos to appear in search or get recommended, so you have to be patient.
Make more money
There are multiple ways you can make money from YouTube Shorts. First, 3 minute shorts will contribute to YouTube’s partner program eligibility requirements, which are 1000 subscribers and 10 million valid public shorts views in the last 90 days. Shorts that show up in the shorts feed will be eligible for monetization so long as they follow the advertiser friendly guidelines.
The drawback is that Shorts Views exclusively receive ad revenue sharing from the Shorts feed. This is separate from long form video monetization on the watch page. The public watch hours from Shorts views in the Shorts feed don’t count towards the 4,000 public hours threshold.
Another drawback is that your Shorts video will generate the same amount of ad revenue, whether it’s 1 minute or 3 minutes long. Therefore, a long form video of 3 minutes may generate more ad revenue.
This person says “The catch is 3 minute Shorts monetization is just as 1 minute Shorts.”
Fortunately, there are other ways to generate revenue from your shorts, such as promoting affiliate products, paid product placements, and sponsorships, as well as inviting viewers to become a channel member with a monthly subscription.
Here’s My Recommendation…
Consider experimenting with 3 minute Shorts alongside your regular content to see if it resonates with your audience. Monitor the performance of your Shorts in YouTube analytics to see how your audience responds. Remember, the best content strategy is often a mix of different formats and links.
Is it possible to add a custom thumbnail to YouTube Shorts so it stands out in the search engines?
Watch this video right now on “How to add a custom thumbnail to YouTube shorts on mobile.”
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