21 - 🌟Thumbnail Strategist Work w/ @Sidemen, @UnspeakableGame, @JohnNellis, @Lance210, @YeahMadTV, @BascllyHomeless... ➜📩 DMs open or ➜tadlosdesigns@gmail
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Joined February 2024
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Unfortunately that's how it is, that guy did the same with many of my thumbnails aswell and blocked me.
He has a multitude of accounts atleast 10, be careful of these people and report these kind of accounts and STOP engaging with them 💀
what the fuck is going on, guys?
he's got almost 1000 followers and this dude just took my thumbnail, posted it on his page as a recent thumbnail and in the same post says he's open to new clients
he never straight up says «this is my thumbnail», but does that really cancel out the fact that his post could mislead a client? the client sees the thumbnail, thinks «cool» and goes to hire him specifically, and most likely won't even bother finding out whose thumbnail it actually is. this is absolutely fucked
On August 10, this YouTube channel had 1,010 subscribers.
Today it has 50,300 subscribers and 20.8M views from only 14 videos.
Here's exactly what changed.
Its first 8 videos were simulations and listicles: "I Simulated 100 Bears in the Jurassic", "6 Scary Prehistoric Animals Found Trapped in Amber". They averaged about 43K views. Only one passed 100K.
Then it uploaded "How Long You'd Last in Every Prehistoric Era."
12.2M views. That one video is 58% of every view the channel has ever had.
Every viral video since has used the same skeleton:
→ Something you KNOW ("you", a polar bear, an orca)
→ vs EVERY something you DON'T (every era, every Ice Age predator, every prehistoric ocean)
The 6 videos in this format average 3.4M views. That's roughly 80x the old average.
This is the mix of Familiarity, Novelty, Relevance. When an idea is highly familiar but has a twist, interest jumps.
You know what a polar bear is but you've never seen one fight a Doedicurus.
if you want this kind of knowledge firsthand on your channel, DM me 📩
The best thumbnails start before photoshop 👨🍳
Always start by understanding: who is this for, and what should they feel the second they see it?
DMs Open 📩
There’s a graph hiding on almost every YouTube video, and most people have never noticed it, even though it’s been there since 2022.
Hover over the progress bar on any long video with enough views and you’ll see a wave appear. Most people who do spot it assume it’s a retention graph showing where viewers stayed and where they left. It isn’t. It’s YouTube’s “Most replayed” graph. The higher the line, the more often people rewatched or jumped back to that exact moment.
A peak can mean the moment was so good people watched it twice. It can also mean it went by too fast and people rewound to catch it, or that viewers skipped straight to it and ignored everything before.
Have you ever noticed this graph?
Tadlos | Thumbnail Strategist retweeted
Recent Thumbnail for Unspeakable Reacts👨🍳
Love working with the GOATs
DM me for Thumbnails 📩
Prepare to see all the "AI will take our jobs 😢" tweets
Testing Thumbnails is costing you views
Changing a shirt color or moving the text a few pixels isn't really a test. If the message of the thumbnail stays the same, the result almost always stays the same too.
So here's the order I'd follow instead:
1) Composition first. Build three completely different layouts and concepts. Each of the concepts should also ideally convey a different emotion and vibe.
2) Elements second. Once you know which layout works, test what's actually in the frame. Not a color swap, but a different subject, a different object, a different thing for the eye to land on.
3) Styling last. Font, size, color, expressions etc.. only matter as something extra you can do once the first two are settled
Timing matters just as much as what you test. The first one or two days of data are close to useless, because your most loyal subscribers click no matter what the thumbnail looks like. Start reading the numbers around day three or four, and wait until day seven before you trust them.
After that first test, leave the video alone for at least one or two weeks before testing it again. The bigger the difference between your versions, the clearer the answer you get back.
Now, there's a point where you should stop using YouTube's built-in test tool altogether. Once the video is somewhere between 1-2 weeks and a month old, switch to hard swaps. That means manually replacing the thumbnail yourself instead of letting the tool split your traffic.
The reason is a blind spot in the tool. Someone who already saw thumbnail A and scrolled past it then gets shown thumbnail B, and because B looks new to them, some of them click. The data leans toward B for that reason alone, and YouTube ends up calling it the winner even when it isn't.
After a hard swap, give it time and watch for the views. If they dip sharply, swap back. If they stay flat, the change didn't make a difference. If they climb, you've found your winner. And don't get excited about an early spike, because some viewers will think it's a brand new video and click just out of curiosity.
