The Ultimate Guide to YouTube Studio

In a world where online video consumption continues to skyrocket, YouTube is the second-most visited website on the planet—second only to Google (its parent company). 

But YouTube’s popularity also makes it a highly competitive platform. Standing out from the crowd to increase the reach of your channel can feel like a tall task, especially if you’re just starting out.

That’s where YouTube Studio comes into play. If leveraged properly, YouTube Studio can help take your content creation strategy to new heights. You can use YouTube Studio to manage videos, access analytics, engage with your community, and even manage your monetization strategy. 

This in-depth guide covers everything you need to know about YouTube Studio, including what it is, how it works, and its top features.

What is YouTube Studio?

YouTube Studio is the main dashboard for content creators on YouTube. Sometimes referred to as YouTube Creator Studio, the tool is a central source of truth for managing videos, analyzing performance, responding to comments, and making money from your YouTube videos.

Think of YouTube Studio as the backend of your YouTube presence—a place to optimize content for performance and scale. It has features similar to Google Analytics but for video content instead of website URLs. 

Whether you’re a business or content creator, you must learn how to use YouTube Studio if you want to get the most out of your video content. 

Below we’ll take a closer look at what you can do with YouTube Studio and how to navigate the platform. You’ll learn more about the dashboard features and get a quick tour of the tool’s functionality. 

YouTube Studio Dashboard 

Your dashboard can best be described as the centralized hub of YouTube Studio. It’s a place that provides an at-a-glance, high-level overview of your YouTube channel. You’ll also find updates for what’s new in YouTube Studio on this page.

The YouTube Studio dashboard consists of different cards—each displaying something unique about your channel or YouTube. Here are some examples of cards you’ll find on this screen:

• Any violations your channel has against YouTube’s community guidelines
• Performance metrics of your latest video your stream
• A quick snapshot of recently published content
• Notifications about your channel and videos
• New achievement milestones
• Channel analytics over the past 28 days
• Most recent comments
• Recent activity of subscribers and members
• Personalized ideas for your channel
• Known issues or ongoing problems with YouTube

The most important types of notifications you’ll find on your dashboard are generally related to monetization and copyrights. Anything related to your AdSense account will be sent to your email and won’t appear on the dashboard notifications.

Create and Manage Content

The “Content” tab on the left side of your YouTube Studio menu is the home for all of your videos. You can complete the following actions from this page:

• Upload new videos
• View published videos
• View upcoming and previous live streams
• Manage posts like polls, images, and more
• Create a new podcast or manage an existing podcast
• Create, edit, and manage playlists

For each type of content, you’ll have a quick view of its visibility (public or private), the last upload date, comments, likes, and views. 

Basically, any type of content that’s accessible to YouTube audiences can be found here. If it needs to be published or it’s already been published, you can access it from your “Content” menu. 

Edit Videos in YouTube Studio

From the “Content” screen, you can also select specific videos and edit them directly in YouTube Studio. If you have lots of videos and don’t want to manually scroll through everything, you can utilize the search bar to find something in your channel.

Once you’ve selected a video, you’ll have the option to:

• Change the title, description, and settings
• Use the editor to add audio, blurs, and end screens
• Remove a section from the video
• View and reply to comments for that specific video
• See metrics for the video you’ve selected

When you’re editing a video, everything else beyond your edits stays the same. Edits won’t change the video’s views, comments, or URL. 

Certain videos with more than 100,000 views may not be eligible for edits, except for blurring faces. You can only trim videos that are shorter than six hours. 

Subtitles and Captions

Adding subtitles and captions to your videos makes your content more accessible to wider audiences—including viewers who are deaf, hard of hearing, and audiences who speak other languages. 

You’ll have the option to add subtitles and captions wherever you’re uploading a new video. But if you want to manage these settings for a video that’s already published, the quickest way to do it is from YouTube Studio.

Just navigate to the “Subtitles” tab on the left side of your dashboard screen. Then select the video you want to edit, and choose your language.

There are four different ways to add subtitles to your video:

• Upload a file that contains what’s being said in the video
• Enter the transcript text, and then use auto-sync to match the timing
• Manually type in subtitles and captions
• Automatically translate the video into the default language

If available for your content, YouTube’s speech recognition technology is the fastest way to add captions to your videos. Otherwise, you’ll need to manually type the text or use a third-party transcription service to get a supported transcript before uploading it. 

You’ll also have the ability to create and manage multi-language audio on this page. 

YouTube Studio Monetization

If you’re part of the YouTube Partner Program (YPP), you can use YouTube Studio to manage your monetization settings.

To qualify for the YPP, you must have at least 1,000+ subscribers and 4,000+ public watch hours in the past 12 months. Channels with 1,000+ subscribers and 10 million public shorts views in the past 90 days are also eligible.

You can access the YPP application directly from YouTube Studio. You’ll also be able to set up your AdSense account or link an existing one. 

Once you’ve been accepted to the program, you can turn on different monetization features within YouTube Studio by navigating to your “Earn” tab. 

YouTube Studio Analytics

The analytics dashboard in YouTube Studio is extremely powerful for creators. You can use it to monitor the performance of your channel and view a range of useful metrics and reports. 

There are several different tabs within your analytics dashboard—Overview, Content, Reach, Engagement, Audience, Revenue, and Research. I’ll cover each of these in greater detail below, explaining which types of metrics you can access from each one.

Overview

This is a quick summary of how your channel is performing. Analytics include:

• Typical performance of your channel and videos
• Top content based on views in the past 28 days
• Real-time performance in the past 48 hours
• Story performance in the past week

Content

The Content tab provides insights into how your audience finds and interacts with your content at the channel level. This tab provides information like:

• Video views
• Shorts views
• Live stream views
• Impressions and watch time
• Number of published content
• How people find your content
• Subscribers
• Audience retention moments
• Viewed Shorts vs. swiped away
• Post impressions
• Average view duration
• Impressions
• Click-through rate

Reach

If you want to view analytics at the video level, you’ll access this information from the “Reach” tab. This is where you’ll find reports for things like:

• Traffic sources showing how people find your content
• External sites and apps that link to your channel
• Suggested videos
• Traffic from your most-watched playlists
• How impressions impact watch time
• Notifications sent
• YouTube search traffic analytics 

Engagement

Engagement analytics focus on how audiences consume your video content. Metrics include:

• Audience retention
• Likes vs. dislikes
• End screen click rate
• Top products tagged in your videos

Audience

This is where you’ll find detailed information on who is watching your videos. It’s extremely useful from a marketing perspective, as you can try to focus new content on existing audiences. Reports and metrics include:

• New viewers
• Unique viewers
• Subscribers
• Total members
• Age and gender of audience
• Audience watch activity
• Type of content your audience watches
• Most popular times your viewers are on YouTube

Revenue

The Revenue tab is only relevant for creators who are part of the YouTube Partner program. You can use this tab to find metrics and reports for:

• Estimated revenue
• Channel earnings over the past six months
• Revenue sources
• Fan funding
• Revenue per mile (RPM) for different types of content
• Revenue per CPM
• Watch page advertisements

Research

This is a great opportunity to find gaps in your content and popular keywords. The research tab shows useful insights into what your audience is searching for across YouTube—beyond your specific channel. 

The tab highlights popular search topics by volume made by your audience in the past month. It also shows search terms and volume based on the audiences of similar channels. 

Channel Customization

You have the ability to change the layout, branding, and other basic channel information from within YouTube Studio. 

Customizing the “Layout” organizes things like the sections of your channel, the channel’s trailer, and the featured video. You can also use the “Branding” components to update your picture, images, and video watermarks. Chanel elements like your name, description, website links, and handle can be edited from the “Basic Info” tab. 

Let’s compare two different YouTube channels so you can see what I mean. Here’s a screenshot of Joe Rogan’s YouTube channel. 

It’s fairly straightforward and includes a profile picture and banner before highlighting the most recent videos. 

Now let’s take a look at Neil Patel’s YouTube channel.

As you can see, Neil takes a slightly different approach than Joe. He has a featured video, longer description, links to websites in the description, and highlights his most popular videos ahead of recently uploaded videos. 

For both channels, the customizations made to the respective homepages were done in YouTube Studio. 

Final Thoughts

Simply uploading videos to your channel won’t guarantee success on YouTube. You’re competing with potentially tens of thousands of other channels in your niche. 

To get your share of views and subscribers, you’ll need to get familiar with YouTube Studio. 

Don’t get overwhelmed by the capabilities of this tool, and don’t feel like you need to master everything at once. Start with the basics. Over time, you can work your way up to more advanced initiatives, like using YouTube Studio Analytics to identify content gaps. 

Good luck on your YouTube journey, and check back soon for more useful resources.