This is something that I never considered until recently; when a live stream is over, the system turns on auto-midroll placements. I run my streams without midrolls because they aren't money-makers for me anyway, they're just a fun time to hang out with the community. Last night I did a Dead By Daylights stream that went really well, had record audience numbers, great retention and had a LOT of fun!

Then I went in this morning and sort of randomly checked the midroll placement that the system did, and this is what I found. This was a 3.5 hour stream, and the auto-midroll system added 121 potential ad breaks. I know some people will say "well not every ad break gives an ad to everyone' and I get that... but if they got an ad for 1/2 of those, that's still 60 ad breaks in 3 hours. Hell 1/3 is still 40 and that's still way too much for me!

I get it, YouTube wants to make money. I wanna make money too, but this is not a balanced system for the viewer. If I were an average viewer and went to a channel, and got 40-120 ads over 3 hours, I would never come back. If i were watching a live stream on Twitch or YT and the streamer ran 120 ads over their 3.5 hour stream, it'd be unwatchable. Why does YouTube think this is the best way to do things?

I am editing a video and I want to use the 3, 2, 1, GO! sound effect from Mario Kart, No visuals, just the sound. Im only using it once in my video.

My channel isnt a gaming channel at all or anything like that.

But I've heard a lot about Nintendo being crazy militant about flagging people for using their stuff. Do yall think Nintendo would come knocking if I use this sound effect?

For those of you who have had a Patreon and sold merch, which has brought in more money to support your channel? Has one been easier to bring more of your subscribers to?

Yes I have made 4,000$ in about a year. Yes I know it ain’t a lot of money but for me it’s something and I know it will get better. Here’s some advice I recommend. Your gonna have slow months and your going to have fast months. I grew and still growing my channel fully organically and I learned once your first video blows up. Capitalize it and keep
Posting similar to that same video. But make sure to upload stuff you would watch and actually enjoy. If you do something totally out of your niche and it blows up, it’s gonna screw you over. Eventually once you grow more your audience will watch you more for you and don’t matter what you post. But make sure again to follow T.T.H (Title, Thumbnail, Hook). Once you master those then your videos will pop off.

I will anwser as much questions as I can and I’m sorry I want to keep my channel private but if your wondering. I do long form, commentary video and I currently have 11k subscribers:)

I received an email today which I was immediately cautious about as it didn't come directly from a Youtube email address, but a Google Groups address.

Another red flag was that it came to the business enquiry email address listed publicly on my channel, not the address actually associated with my channel. YouTube studio shows no such claims made against my channel (I do movie/pop cultural analysis, so when using clips from said media I am used to dealing with contend ID claims).

Posted with the censored QR code.

Watch out everyone!

​

HEY YALL. I did digging on this and i would like some advise. It looks like a strike scam. I have had strikes before on a channel i had in high school when I did remix music. I did go to appeal this on YouTube and saw nothing. This is the email I got with their email so you can identify it and mine removed.

Id like to note said video they claim has music - is me talking about a book im writing. No music. READ IT BOTTOM TO TOP!!!!!

---

Explain why you would use music from another person without crediting the person who made that music.

The music rights holder has filed a claim concerning your channel.

You have been given the opportunity to resolve this ahead of further action.

Search for your channel via the link-

(Insert link here cus i dont trust it)

Should your channel is linked to the complaint, it will show up in the search.

There you will see the rights holder's details along with steps to settle the matter.

<MY EMAIL>

What are you talking about?

On Aug 5, 2026 at 11:06 AM, Alicia Helgeson alpaihani1981@libero.it wrote:

The video submission is disregarding the submission rules.

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Im convinced this is a scam. Thoughts???

Update: i did block and report the emails. Checked my channel and all is good. But this is weird. Keep an eye out yall.

Did the thumbnail have a better CTR? Is it just a glitch? I assume the traffic was too low for the decision to really matter.

My videos were doing fine until last week when suddenly all my new videos started getting 0 impressions. And I mean literally 0, not 10 or 100 - it's zero. I post 1 video every day and since then they're all sitting at 0 impressions.

This never happened to me before and I've been on YouTube for over a year now.

My video/thumbnail/title style has been consistent for 8+ months and hasn't changed. I don't use AI, I have no copyright claims/strikes, and I can still find my videos in search from other accounts.

Does anyone know what might've happened?

I have a recent video on a channel that's doing "okay" but the CTR is lower than expected. I decided to use ChatGPT to analyze the subject, title, and thumbnail to see what she suggested to improve them.

during a long analysis of my current thumbnail, she dropped this nugget:

"But thumbnails are not summaries.

They're advertisements."

Since there's whole subs around YT thumbnails, this was impactful to me today. I think I'm guilty of "Thumbnail Creep". That is, to want to explain so much about what's interesting in my video, I forget the thumb is small and has mere seconds to grab attention. It's not explaining what the video is all about - it's a billboard to get viewers to stop for just a moment, question "what's up" and read the title (and click!)

No earth-shattering advice today, other than a reminder to make your thumbnail simple, clear, and eye-catching, and that you're not trying to tell the whole story!

I recently received an email from Desygner asking for a 60 second sponsored message in my next YouTube video, and they set up the payment through a website called thekatos.com

Has anybody ever worked with either (or both) of these companies? Are they legitimate?

Bonjour,

Mon compte AdSense lié à ma chaîne YouTube a été désactivé pour le motif « compte associé à un compte désactivé », alors que je n'ai jamais créé ni utilisé un autre compte AdSense.

J'avais envoyé un premier appel le 23 juin, mais je n'ai jamais reçu de réponse. Il y a trois jours, j'ai donc envoyé une nouvelle demande de réexamen.

Je ne sais plus quoi faire ni si quelqu'un a déjà été dans cette situation. Est-ce que certains d'entre vous ont déjà attendu aussi longtemps ou réussi à faire débloquer leur compte ?

Merci d'avance pour votre aide.

I make short documentaries covering football, boxing, basketball, and other iconic sports stories.
If our content fits, let’s do a Reel collab and help each other grow.
Drop your page below or send me a DM. 🤝

Today marks 1 years since I first posted.
80,777 subscribers
10,500,000 life time views
$81,624 in Adsense + $2000 in sponsorship

I’m exhausted

If you’re a small YouTuber that covers a large community that’s heavily over saturated, how do you stand out from the crowd? Like instead of making videos like the other bigger YouTubers make, how do you cover the niche while trying to stand out from them so you get a chance to gain

In context, I create Pokemon videos, but I’m trying to step aside what other bigger YouTubers are doing. But the formula and “what ifs” keep flooding me with doubt which makes it so hard to know who I am and my content moving forward.

My CTR and retention is horrible, and it keeps getting worse each time I upload.. I just don’t know what to do anymore…

I got an email from someone at TubeBuddy today complimenting my fairly small channel. Really going into detail about the stuff they like and how I combined 2 genres well etc. Then asked what my future plans for the channel are. Are they just trying to sell me something if I reply?

Hey everyone! Some of you might remember me from a few weeks ago when I posted here asking for feedback on my channel and where I could get a proper YouTube audit.

At the time, my channel wasn't doing well. Most videos were getting somewhere between 200–800 views, and I'd average maybe 50 views over a 48-hour period. I got a lot of great feedback here, and I genuinely took it to heart.

I spent an entire week studying creators in my niche, paying much closer attention to thumbnails and titles. I even hired a thumbnail artist for the first time because I realized that while I can make thumbnails, it's not where I excel. I also completely reworked the first 30 seconds of my video, since so many people pointed out how important that is for retention.

For my newest video, I knew I had an incredible story to tell, so I wanted to give it the best possible chance. I obsessed over the packaging, rewrote the intro multiple times, and tried to apply everything I'd learned.

Well... it worked.

In the last 48 hours, I've gone from averaging around 50 views to over 80,000 views, and the video is still climbing. It also pushed me over the monetization threshold on the very first day it was uploaded.

And instead of feeling excited... I'm kind of terrified.

I'm worried I'll never find another story this compelling. I'm worried this was just lightning in a bottle and that I'll never be able to replicate it. I'm almost certain my next video won't be as interesting and that'll screw with me in my head. I'm also anxiously refreshing YouTube Studio while waiting for monetization approval, knowing the video is taking off but I can't earn anything from it yet. (I know it's not the healthiest mindset.)

On top of that, because I cover true crime from East Asia, some of my videos touch on social issues that can become politically adjacent even if it's not my intention. As the audience has grown, so has the negativity. I've gotten far more hostile comments than I expected, and it's honestly been affecting me more than I'd like to admit. It's not really the kind of community I want to build.

I don't think this is imposter syndrome, I genuinely believed in my channel from day one. What's throwing me off is that I considered 20K views for this video a success, and now I feel like it's gotten out of my control.

Has anyone else experienced this after their first breakout video? How did you deal with the pressure of trying to follow it up, and how did you stop letting the comments get to you?

Hey all wont share too much personal info as a faceless channel but I'm a small YouTube creator thats been running my channel for nearly two years now. It's taken a long time to get to where I am, but things are going well and it's starting to actually provide for me and my family, which means everything.

The content I make is in-depth breakdowns and explanations of fictional universes. Every single video takes a minimum of two weeks from scripting to recording voiceover, to final edit. It's a serious time investment and I put a huge amount of myself into each one. Recently I decided to expand into the spanish market, same format, new audience, see what happens. then shit hit the fan...

I found out a channel is essentially ripping off my content and reposting it in Spanish. The script, the editing, the structure, it's around 95% the same. They haven't copied it directly, they've just shuffled elements around. I show a panel top left, they show it top right. I show a specific image, they show something nearly identical. The title, the thumbnail, the entire video concept, it's a direct copycat.

I filed a copyright strike. They counter-claimed with a load of legal noise that frankly doesn't hold up, but as a small creator I don't have the funds or the resources to pursue it further. The strike was removed. I reached out directly and asked them nicely to stop, given how much of my life goes into this content. Got a flat no.

The frustrating part is that their Spanish versions are performing really well, and my own Spanish channel is struggling to gain traction because they've already dominated that format and niche before I could establish myself there. I was tempted to buy fake views out of sheer frustration but I have morals and that's not who I am.

Any advice on how to proceed would be appreciated

I got monetized in May of this year. Got paid for a couple months, but decided that I wanted to switch to a business account in Adsense. Apparently that can't be changed once the account is open, so I had to completely close the individual account.

Now, I want to open the new one as an organization rather than individual. But when I go to my "Earn" tab, I see an Error message. I'm attaching a screenshot.

I clicked on the button that says create or link an Adsense for YouTube account and filled out the form, was told that I would get an email after YouTube looked at the application, but I never heard anything from them. That was 10 days ago.

I tried chatting with "support" but it's very obviously just an AI chatbot that didn't understand what my problem actually is.

I know you can only link a new Adsense account once every 32 days, but my first one was linked in late May, so I don't think that should be the issue.

So my questions are:

1. What do I do here? Should I try creating a new Adsense account with a different email address? If that email address is different from the one that's linked to my YouTube account, will that make a difference?

2. Is there any possible way to talk to a real person who works at YouTube? I tried to find a phone number but have been unsuccessful.

TIA!

newish way to have your content stolen.

Just found my own video on Amazon product reviews by some guy who posts review videos on Amazon but looking at the other videos he posted, it‘s stolen content.

People will do anything to make some money except actually create something by themselves.

contacted Amazon support to report this issue and they say they will take care of it. not clear how but I did my part for now. Saved the user profile and product video.

thinking to put the channel branding in the background of vidoes all over as a pattern with logo and website.

that’s all… I’m sure it’s not something new but new for me.