How A Pro YouTuber ACTUALLY Makes Thumbnails

how did Ryan tryan make this thumbnail this video was one of his worst performers on launch and if you one of the first few hundred th000 viewers you would already know why but he knew this video would be huge and the views came in quick at first but suddenly it was dead he and his team were scrambling the editing and pacing are good the retention is high everyone loves it it should be one of the best videos we've ever made but nobody is clicking it well the click-through rate was one of his lowest ever and

what they didn't understand right away is that the thumbnail they had at the time was was good theoretically but what was the problem and that's when Ryan realized seeing it for the first time on his phone in dark mode it didn't stand out at all to make things worse it didn't match the vibe of the video either the series was quirky and cheerful but the thumbnail looked just plain sad so he switched the background to Green Grass and tweaked the shirt accordingly and the view graph broke immediately it didn't take long to become the second

highest viewed video on his channel well that was an easy fix all he had to do was switch two colors but what about this thumbnail it's blurry dark and out of focus how on Earth was he going to turn this one around let me explain sometime in 2020 he stumbles across this photo now if you're like Ryan and have a good understanding of packaging YouTube videos you may have already realized the person who took it accidentally made what could be a perfect thumbnail and they didn't even know it after some sleuthing he finds out it

was taken at juwels undersea Lodge in Florida and for only $900 he could spend the night following a quick flight from Texas he arrives and takes the plunge down into into the hotel how's the water Daniel fantastic a diver named Daniel helped him with The Descent but Ryan asks if he can do him another favor all he needed were some shots from outside the hotel window for the thumbnail and Daniel agreed but here's where Ryan made his first mistake unfortunately he didn't check the footage right away and that ended up causing some pretty major problems

instead he moved on to do some filming where he enjoyed the ocean views and ate some pizza but then he got stuck so they had to send someone to help that wasted some time but then he spent even more time filming a sponsor segment for the video finally it's 1:00 a.m. and with the footage already Ryan plugs in the GoPro to find the thumbnail I showed you earlier which was basically unusable where's the rusted metal or the bolts around the window seen in the reference photo he'd already spent a lot of time and thousands of

dollars on this video so he hatched a plan using Photoshop magic he'll make it look like the reference photo only problem is it's a lot harder than he thought he spends just over an hour on this and at one point even gave up and tried to put his head on this guy's body but it just won't work and that's when I realized oh my gosh is Daniel still awake he texted the stranger at 2: in the morning offering to pay him for his help but the chances he'll even be awake to read it are so

low Ryan had a perfectly good video idea yet a thumbnail nobody would click on defeated he prepared to call it a day but then Daniel actually responded it was time for round two Daniel Comes Back gears up and heads down into the water Ryan gets into position so they can film him with the GoPro again but it wasn't over in one shot they went back and forth for 2 hours fixing lighting issues offc Center shots and plugging in the camera to his laptop over and over again to check the footage right when they began to

run low on battery they'd finally gotten something good but it still wasn't quite right the next challenge was to bring it back into Photoshop he made multiple versions experimenting with composition color filters and different text options until finally it was ready he'd spent 8 hours on the thumbnail alone but was it worth it once his editor sent the final version of the video he'd had all he needed it was time to upload skip to the present and it's one of the best performers on his channel and part of that success comes from his dedication to

capturing the right photo for the thumbnail and it wasn't the only time he went the extra mile to get the perfect photo he even once cut down a dying tree on his property to make a reference to Minecraft for a thumbnail instead of taking the easy way out and photoshopping a fake image he cut the tree into three logs and took this picture another important thing to notice about Ryan's thumbnails are the buckets or series of videos that fit in the same group maybe you didn't notice them all right away so I'll Point them out

to you first up you have the surviving on videos he has multiple series about surviving on a penny and several about cryptocurrency it's funny how many YouTubers copied his format for these videos then there's the videos where he photoshops celebrities into the background of his Instagram photos which many people copied as well like at least introduce a Twist don't copy the title exactly Ryan also made several videos videos spending the night in Crazy places the $1 Hotel the world's lonliest house an abandoned ghost town and others there're some of his most popular videos too the

underwater hotel video we spoke about earlier has 13 million views he has a lot of videos related to Minecraft several about Tesla autopilot and a few about Facebook Marketplace when videos are directly related and viewers are left wanting more they'll watch multiple in a row now this is obviously to increase session time so that YouTube gives him more Impressions but I think it's valuable to look at exactly how he expands on a single idea check this out the recent Series where he trades a penny into a house he doesn't even change the title he knows

it's good already and when he first did the same concept four years ago at a smaller scale he included episode 1 2 Etc but that just isn't needed when the thumbnails can differentiate them also if you were to title this one trading a penny into a truck it wouldn't be as clickable even worse with this one trading up from a truck to a tiny house isn't that crazy but each step along the way when you see the thumbnail and read turning a penny into a house in one week you're intrigued especially as a new viewer

next is by far his most influential series I survived the world's loudest room the world's quietest room using only realistic Minecraft tools and 50 hours in third person right now we'll focus on these two here's one of the initial drafts for the third person video what surprised me a lot is that he didn't end up using it looking at the two thumbnails side by side the standing on the cliff Edge seems more clickable to me I stared at them for a while to try and figure out why maybe the text was too big but there

would be too much empty space if he scaled it down maybe he didn't like the blue color was it because he photoshopped the camera rig but he wanted to use the real thing or did he want people in the frame to react to how strange he looked the best reason I came up with is that maybe it was too dangerous and he wanted to protect his brand or avoid demonetization because YouTube can be touchy these days but really I'm not sure why okay this next one is insane you must have seen this thumbnail by now

and if not you're just not paying attention to YouTube it's his third most viewed at 15 million views and here's why it worked so well the idea is solid and based on previous viral successes but he didn't just copy exactly what they did and hoped it would work he came up with a new thumbnail that blew the others out of the water there are only two main elements three if you count the room itself that fit perfectly in the boundaries of the rule of thirds Ryan himself is placed comfortably in the center with his eyes

resting on the grid line even better he stands out aggressively the high contrast and balanced composition working together to make Ryan a magnet for your eyes on screen his emotion seems authentic and it isn't so absurd it feels childish the image itself is strange too the foam walls look so weird and Ryan sits in an uncomfortable posture one intense light source from the side makes everything feel even more unnerving the text helps a lot here as well notice how there's no repeated text between the thumbnail and the title when you put them together it's delivered

as a challenge video and there's something interesting about that if he's just in a really quiet room how could it look so uncomfortable after 41 minutes thumbnail and title isn't all that packaging is though if this caught your attention and you clicked on the video he's only won half the battle how does he close the Curiosity loop I don't think you realize how crazy the world's quietest room really is instantly the first frames of the video show you what you came to see while he says something that will hold your curiosity to see more apparently

30 minutes inside will drive you completely insane now the stakes have been raised and you're even more intrigued than before could it be true that only 30 minutes will drive you insane the thumbnail said 41 minutes that's what they're saying anyway I don't believe that I think that's baloney I think that is a large pile of a meat-like substance Ryan subverts expectations and asserts his objection in crucially a funny way right off the bat there's a strong emotional reaction and he gives you an idea of what humor the rest of the video has this is

one of the best hooks I've ever seen on YouTube it has everything to justify watching more and further capturing your attention but it only took him 11 seconds though it doesn't matter how effective the intro Hook is if viewers don't click on the thumbnail because if they don't click they're not going to watch any effort crafting the perfect Hook is wasted unless the thumbnail gets their attention to begin with which is why you need to watch this video to see all 21 of the most clickable thumbnail formats on YouTube found the prison get back here

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