How to Upload a YouTube Video: A Comprehensive Step-by-step Process

Want To Know How To Upload A YouTube Video?

A lot of you are wanting to know how to upload a video on YouTube. 

Specifically, almost 50,000 of you search for an answer to this every month.

So today, we’re going to show you how to upload a YouTube video and beyond just telling you which buttons to click…

…we’re also going to show you some little tricks and things you need to do along the way so that once your video is published, it actually gets some views.

How To Upload A YouTube Video From Desktop

Step 1: If you haven’t already made a YouTube account, you’ll need to do that first. An easy way is to just sign in using your Gmail.

From there, you need to decide if you want to upload videos and create your channel from your personal account or if you want it to be a company account. 

We’re going to skip the tutorial on how to create a company YouTube channel because that’s not why the majority of you clicked on this post.

Step 2: Once you’re all logged and you’ve got the right account selected, you’re going to hit the create icon.

Then click the “Upload a video,” and then the open file window will appear.

You can either hit the blue “Select files” button, or you can drag and drop a video file like we’re going to do here.

Now we’re just selecting a random video for the sake of this tutorial, but you’ll want to obviously choose a video…

…that you have put a lot of thought into, planned intentionally with your target audience in mind, and created to give value to your audience. 

Once it’s uploaded, a screen like this will pop up which will prompt you through these 5 sections of the process.

Step 3: On this first page, we have your title, which can be up to 100 characters. As well as your description. which can be up to 5,000 characters. 

You’ll want to use the title to do three things:

1. Include the keyword you’re wanting to rank for.
2. Get the viewer’s attention to make them want to click.
3. Make it clear to the viewers what the video is about.

Don’t get so clickbaity with #2 that #3 gets lost. 

For the description, you’ll want to utilize this space to do a few things:

• Give the viewer a quick summary as to what the video is going to be about and be sure to again include your keyword in the first couple of lines.
• Give them a call to action to subscribe to your channel and hit the notification bell so that they get updated when you upload a new video.
• Include links to any other related videos of yours that they can watch on your YouTube channel…

…be it related to the topic of this video that you’re uploading or just your top videos, in general.

• You can include a link to your website, but limit your descriptions to just 1 external URL.

YouTube wants to keep people on its platform, so generally, the algorithm favors you more when you don’t link away from the website. 

• Include timestamps that also have relevant keywords because that can help you get found on Google’s search engine in addition to YouTube’s.

Plus they’re just viewer-friendly to help them find the info they need.

From there, you’ll want to upload a thumbnail. You can technically choose a screenshot from the video as a thumbnail.

But, we would recommend creating and uploading one that does a lot of the same things your title should do.

And that is, to get the viewer’s attention and make them want to click. Here’s our tutorial on how to make YouTube thumbnail to help you get started.

And then, you can add your video to a playlist if you plan on grouping like-topics together…

…which we would recommend so as to create bingeable content for viewers and keep them on your channel for longer. 

If you don’t know how to create a YouTube playlist, you can read our post about it next.

Under “Audience,” you’ll need to select if your video is made for kids or not. And to clarify, this is not asking if your video is inappropriate or not. 

It just means do you want your video to reach kids.

We typically say “No it’s not” for our videos because kids are not our target market, so we don’t want our organic views wasted on them. 

You can take this a step further and restrict your video to people who are only 18 and over as well. 

Automatic chapters is where you can let YouTube add automatic timestamps.

But we usually do that ourselves in the description like we mentioned because we want the chapters to hold specific keywords. 

Below that, you’ll need to add tags to your video. Think of your tags like keywords.

Think of all the relevant search terms people could search for in which you’d hope they find this video you’re uploading, and add those as tags. 

Now, throughout this tutorial, you’ve probably seen little blue tools prompting help at every step of the way.

This is the VidIQ plugin tool that we use every single day to help us optimize our channel and videos. 

If you want to learn more about this tool, you can read our YouTube keyword research post.

But otherwise, you will not see this tool on your screen when you’re uploading a YouTube video.

After that, you have a lot of optional or standard features that transparently we don’t usually mess with such as:

• language,
• recording date and location,
• license and distribution, and
• shorts sampling. 

But you can set those features to whatever your preference is. 

Below that you’ll want to select the proper category, and choose if and how you want to display comments, likes, and dislikes on your video. 

And then lastly on this screen, you can set up a fundraiser to go along with your video, if necessary. 

Once you’ve got this screen the way you want it, you can hit the blue Next button. 

Step 4: The next screen is monetization.

Now in this tutorial, the example video we uploaded was from when we were featured on NBC’s the Profit.

So, YouTube picked up on that and is not offering us monetization because of copyright laws. 

But in most cases, you would be uploading your own original content without copyright issues…

…and so you would select what type of ads you want to be displayed on your video so as to make money from simply uploading it.

You have to have at least 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours in the past year to be eligible for monetization.

So if you have less than that, you probably won’t see the screen in your process. 

But if you have reached that threshold, you can apply for YouTube’s Partner Program to start monetizing. 

Once you’ve got those options set correctly, you can hit the blue Next button. 

Now, before we get into this video elements screen, just a quick reminder that you can now enroll in our new social media ads training course.

If you want to master social media advertising, then this course is for you. 

Step 5: Now on the video elements screen, you can add subtitles, an end screen, and cards. 

We would suggest you utilize all 3.

Add cards whenever you reference another video in your video, and add an end screen to prompt more of your material to people at the end of your video. 

You want to keep people on your channel, that’s the goal. 

Once you’ve added everything, hit the blue Next button. 

Step 6: The checks screen is where YouTube checks your video for issues that may restrict its visibility or monetization.

And then, gives you the opportunity to fix those issues before publishing. 

So as you can see, it’s flagging us because we’ve got a copyrighted video uploaded.

But this is a great screen to just double-check everything to make sure nothing is going to cause you unnecessary problems. 

One time we uploaded what we thought was royalty-free audio, and this screen showed us that was not the case.

So we were able to fix that before we published.

Once you’re done with this screen, click the blue Next button to the last screen, the visibility section. 

Step 7: You can either make your video public, unlisted, or private. Or, you can schedule it for later.

Private means only you and the people you choose can see the video. 

Unlisted means anyone with the video link can see the video.

And public means everyone can see the video. If you’re publishing it as public right now, you can set it to instant premiere. 

If you’re scheduling your video in advance, you can set it to regularly premiere. 

“YouTube Premieres lets you and your viewers watch and experience a new video together in real-time.

Create buzz for your Premiere by sharing the watch page so viewers can set reminders, chat, and leave comments.”

It allows you to talk with your viewers in real-time once the video publishes in a live chat.

And your subs will get notifications about the video leading up to its publishing which usually helps increase views.

Make sure you’ve got everything on this screen set the way you want it before hitting the blue Save button…

…because if you publish right now, you can still go back and edit some things, but it will be out there. 

People might have already seen the mistakes you fix an hour later.

But once you’re ready you can hit the blue Save or Publish button. 

How To Upload A Video From Your Phone

Now. here’s how to upload a YouTube video using your mobile phone.

Download the YouTube app, click the plus Create button, click “Upload video”, and then follow the same prompts from there.

Quick Note When Uploading Using Your Phones

Although be careful because depending on the type of video you upload, it will automatically upload it as a Short like it wants to do to our video here. 

So you’ll want to make sure you’re uploading a longer, horizontal style video if you want to upload it like a regular video.

And those are the steps on how to upload a YouTube video. Be sure to read our post on how to promote YouTube videos after this.

But if you want to get the most from your YouTube videos, check out our YouTube promotion services today!

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