YouTube is undoubtedly the biggest video platform in the world.

• YouTube has a cutting edge technology for videos
• It is owned by Google and now the 2^nd biggest search engine
• 3 out of 4 videos that pops up in google are from YouTube
• It is FREE!

By now you must all have at least one YouTube channel. If you don’t have a channel just go to youtube.com and sign in with your google account.

Now in this fresh new post I would like to share 7 new AWESOME YouTube features that you may have missed. Here they are,

1. Ability to change your display name

In the past you would have this ugly looking username that you had taken during registration. In this new YouTube you have the opportunity to a custom looking clean name. Like in this example I had this username on my personal channel,

And with the new update I have my full name,

This is because now you can integrate your google plus profile or page with your YouTube account. If you have a personal channel, then link your G+ profile, or if you have a brand channel, then link your google plus page.

For an example I have my personal channel at youtube.com/tamalanwar

And my blog’s channel at youtube.com/blogkori

All you have to do is to open up a google plus profile and link your google profile or page (depending on your need) to your YouTube account.

2. Upload longer videos (yes any length you wish)

With the new YouTube you have the opportunity to upload videos longer than 15 minutes. In the past YouTube had a limit of 10 minutes, then 15 and now you can upload longer videos. To enable this feature you have to go to your YouTube channel and verify your phone number.

Click to verify and they will send you a code in your mobile that you have to enter in your channel to verify it. After that you should see a green light in your YouTube features.

3. Create more channels under a single account

Before this update you were allowed to create just one channel per YouTube account.

Meaning?

I had to create a new gmail account with a new email address just to be able to create a new channel for a brand or a client I manage.

Now with YouTube you are able to create upto 50 channels per account. Isn’t that great?

Now the trick is, with every google account you will have a YouTube account. In that google account you have a google plus account where you can create pages.

For every page, you can create a YouTube channel.

So when you are in YouTube, just click on switch accounts to create/access the new channel. This new channel is independent and has its own subscriber data, videos and the vanity url.

4. Built-in analytics

In the past all you had was how many views you got per YouTube video. Now in the new analytics tabs you will have a new google analytics type dashboard to see video views, time spend, where the people came from and all the geeky data. You can also link your YouTube account with your google analytics account to combine the stats.

To access the analytics tab, go to youtube settings > Analytics in the left.

5. Use a custom thumbnail in your videos

Okay this one is not a new feature. You must have seen these custom thumbnails on other big channels. Now you have the opportunity to have these custom thumbnails on your very own channel.

To enable this feature just verify your channel with your mobile phone and wala! You will see a simple little thumb uploader option next to your video upload/manager window.

6. Promote a video inside a video

This one is around for a year or so, but still worth mentioning. You can add a watermark of your channel logo or an individual video in all of your videos. People are using this feature to promote their channels and their latest videos. Good if you have a lot of videos and want to promote one of your latest videos.

Just go to In-video programming from channel settings and set what you want to display in your videos.

7. Make money with your videos

The latest edition in YouTube is that you can directly earn money from your subscribers. In the past, video makers would sell tee-shirts and merchandises to make money off their videos. They also had this opportunity to share the revenue of the ad that YouTube puts on their videos. Now you have the opportunity to offer paid subscriptions. To enable this you need to have at least 10,000 subscribers.

The opportunities are endless. I like Ryan Higa’s videos and he has 10 million subscribers. Now if he were to make paid videos and charge just $1 per month for these new videos,

And out of the 10 million subscribers, if only 1% of them subscribe, he will have an instant $100,000/month income. So Ryan Higa, you better go and make some money out there!

8. YouTube comments merged with Google+ comments

Okay so not long ago YouTube combined their comments with google plus. So when you post a comment on a video you have the option to show it up on google plus. Also anyone sharing the video on G+ will show up on YouTube comments and vice versa.

So this integration really gives a new opportunity to reach more viewers from G+

9. Fan finder

While I was writing this post, I noticed this fresh new update from YouTube.

You can now post a free ad on YouTube to find targeted fans. Don’t know much about it right now but basically you can put your videos in their big network and let YouTube promote it and your channel!

Awesome!

So go ahead and start taking advantage of all the YouTube features for your business.

This article 7 New YouTube Features That You May Have Missed! was first published on BlogKori