Everyone wants to know how to increase YouTube views and get more traffic to their video page or from their videos to their website.

3 Tips To Increase Your Views And Traffic From Your YouTube Channel

1. Ask watchers to subscribe. By building up your subscribers you increase your views and keep the view numbers more consistent. For me, if I have over 100,000 views it means that video has gone viral because I don’t have that many subscribers. BUT it is normal for iJustine to have over 100,000 views on each video because she has over a million subscribers. Her video didn’t go viral – her fans watched it in their subscription list.

Use your customized subscription link.

• Put your customized subscription link as the very first thing in your description. Make it the complete link and YouTube will make it clickable and it will be much easier for your watchers to subscribe.
• If you have a YouTube icon on your website make the link connected to it your customized subscription link.
• Add an annotation at the end of your videos asking people to subscribe. Make the annotation link…you guessed it…your customized subscription link.

2. Put your social media links in your YouTube page sidebar. If I fall in love with someone’s videos there’s a good chance I want to learn more about them. I want to find out where they interact online [it sounds a bit like stalking but it's what we want, right?]. If the video didn’t tell me where to go I check their YouTube page sidebar.

Add links to your social media sites.

YouTube has made it easy for users to add clickable links under the channel’s description. Once you are logged in go to “My Channel” and click the “Edit” button in the right sidebar. Add your links and save.

3. Add links to all your other sites in EACH videos description. After I had someone leave a comment and say, “Are you on Facebook?” I knew that my sidebar links weren’t apparent to everyone. This is what each of my video descriptions have now:

I’d love to hear from you! Here’s how to connect with me:

Website: http://simplevloggingtips.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/vloggingtips
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/simplevloggingtips
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jendi
Google Plus: http://www.gplus.to/SimpleVloggingTips

and because they are the complete links with http:// YouTube makes them clickable for me. Thank you YouTube!

Customize your default settings to have your links in each description.

Don’t worry; this can be a once and done thing. You don’t have to manually add the links each time. Whatever you add in the default settings will automatically be added each time you upload a new video. Sweet!

Some of you over achievers might want to go through and add the links to all past videos. If you have extra time, feel free; BUT if you are a busy person with lots to do I suggest that you just add them to your most popular past videos. Go to your Video Manager page and click the drop down at the top to change the list from “Newest” first to “Most Viewed.”

Now you know 3 easy ways to direct traffic on your YouTube page and get more views. They don’t take a lot of time or work to set them up but you’ll benefit from them for a long time.

Here’s a video for you in case you are still asking, “How do I get more views for my videos?“

If you want to increase subscribers and traffic to your video blogs on YouTube work on being consistent. If you publish a video every Thur. at 1 PM watchers will know when to “tune in” and when to tell others to check your channel. It might even become one of their habits to watch your video at that time – and that’s a good thing!

I’m working on it, and it’s not very easy for me. In this video I give you some simple tips to help you be consistent with your video blogs.

Do you have any good tips that would help me be more consistent? Leave them in a comment!

It’s good to use a lot of video tags when you make a video and upload it to YouTube. However, we don’t usually have extra time to research keywords, add a bunch of single tags, and some phrases in quotes. There is a YouTube setting that can make your life easier!

Log in to your YouTube account and open the drop down in the top right hand corner. Then click “Settings.”

Look down the left hand side of the Settings page and click the “Defaults” tab.

Whatever you add  - and save! – on this page will automatically show up whenever you upload a YouTube video. You can add your standard keywords in the video tags and just add a few extra when you upload your next video blog. This is also a good place to save your customized YouTube subscription link. I love this setting that saves me time ’cause I need more time to make videos!

Here are 2 other ways to increase YouTube views and traffic from your channel.

The main purpose of YouTube is to share videos with the world, so it is counter-productive to upload a video and keep it private, right? However, I can think of some reasons to use the YouTube settings for private videos.

1. Someone brand new to video blogging that wants to select who sees it.
2. A video that needs edited.
3. The video contains family and friends that don’t want to be online.
4. It needs to be approved before the public views it.

What Are YouTube’s Private Settings?

YouTube has 3 levels of privacy settings for your videos.

1. Public – This one is obvious and the default setting. You can close comments and disable embedding if you are worried about those. A public video will come up in related videos and general searches on YouTube as well as Google and your channel – which is really what most vloggers want.

2. Unlisted – Your video will NOT show up in search, related videos, your channel, nor to anyone just generally playing around in YouTube. BUT you can embed it on a website and share the link with anyone that you want. Just know that once they have the link they can share it or embed it – if you haven’t disabled embedding. Making it unlisted is not a guarantee that it won’t be seen; it just makes it harder for people to find it.

Once a video is embedded watchers can follow it back to YouTube. I often do this to see more of someone’s videos, whose channel it’s on, how many views it has, what the comments are, etc. If you see the YouTube logo on a video all you have to do is click on the logo and the YouTube page will open. Once they follow it back they have access to the share link and embed code – unless, of course, you disable them.

3. Private – The uploaded video will not show up in search at all, not on your public channel page, related videos nor anywhere else. You have to manually share it with others through email addresses. You can only share it with 50 people total and they have to have a YouTube account to view it. If you want to share a lot of videos with family I suggest that you check into a different video host designed for private group sharing of videos.

What the private setting is good for is if you want to upload a raw video from your phone or mobile device and polish it a bit before making it public. The private video setting is also a good choice if you need to get approval from someone before making it public.

Hope this helps you understand the YouTube settings for private videos. Once you get used to them I think you’ll realize what a great tool they can be for video blogging and marketing. I’d love to hear how you use the YouTube settings for privacy – leave me a comment!

I had a lot of fun with Leah and the Mamavation forum last night. I got to talk about video blogging for an hour straight! I would talk about it all day if someone would listen.

There were lots of great questions that I had great answers to, but Leah asked a couple that made me pause. I would love to hear how you would answer this question:

1. What is a good amount of video views for a blogger?

Let’s look at it from the perspective of a regular blogger that has started from home – not anyone that was already a celebrity. They have a fair sized following on their blog, often work with brands, and want to add video to their arsenal of social media power.

It’s amazing how the video view numbers vary – even on one channel. There are so many factors that go into adding to those view numbers. If a popular site embeds it, if it’s linked to a viral video, if it’s a trending topic that lots of people are searching…all of those can skyrocket the views of one video. Then you could upload another video that barely gets 50 views.

I think that it’s more important to look at the average views. How many views are they consistently getting? That is more indicative of a loyal following. In other words – build up your subscriptions.

Someone in the live stream chat suggested that 100 views the first week is good. What do you think? Agree or disagree?

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I really enjoyed live streaming again and would definitely do it weekly if I could monetize the show. If you would like me to be on your show contact me by emailing jendi at simplevloggingtips.com.

I’d like to encourage those of you who are bloggers to join Leah’s Bookieboo Blogger Network.  It’s free and can open up opportunities for you. Leah has your best interests at heart in the fitness niche and blogging niche. When you join please answer the “Who referred you?” slot with my name – Jendi Pagano. Thanks so much!