Thumbnail Design Client Strategy — Full Breakdown & Transcript

[00:01] thumbnail designers every single day and yet as a YouTuber managing multiple teams generating me over $15,000 a month only a few catch my attention so if you're a thumbnail designer I'm going to show you exactly how to charge the

[00:15] highest price possible for your work fill up your DMs with interested clients and even have big YouTubers chase you instead of you chasing them and for end I'll also be giving away a free uncut tutorial by one of my thumbnail

[00:29] thumbnails like mine that get hundreds of thousands of views from scratch but before that you need to understand why a YouTuber would even hire you in the first place for my experience there are six characteristics that make the

[00:43] perfect thumbnail designers first you have cost highly skilled designers can channels are willing to spend a lot more money on thumbnails than smaller so whether or not your rates are going

[00:57] going to be dependent on the the client second is ideation and for me personally thumbnail designer can bring to the table there are a ton of people who can create a thumbnail based on instructions but there are very few who can help a

[01:12] YouTuber such as myself build out and improve on the concept and idea to you'll want to create your own channel probably study thumbnail psychology across YouTube and learn General design and color theory but a word of warning

[01:27] never claim that you can guarantee a specific CT are for a clients because into this that make it impossible for you to guarantee anything naturally as a video gets more views and Impressions CTR will dip down which makes it a bad

[01:41] measure for the success of your work instead Market yourself as a thumbnail designer and a YouTube expert that helps with ideation third is flexibility and revisions as a YouTuber I'm constantly changing and tweaking my thumbnails to

[01:54] get the best possible performance out of them and most other creators I know do the same so to to increase your higher ability include a system for fast-paced revisions if they want a few simple revisions don't charge them full price

[02:06] for a second one charge them half or 30% or so to make things easy trust me being easy to work with goes a long way fourth is Speed Most YouTubers expect less than a 24-hour turnaround time so anything outside of that immediately becomes less

[02:21] desirable make sure that you meet this standard and if possible try to do it even faster if you can the fifth is communication because I can't tell you how many times a designer has delivered late without telling me which is really

[02:33] infuriating when I have strict deadlines to meet at the end of the day creators in the way sometimes but you won't be surprised how many designers won't communicate when something goes wrong so if something happens respond quickly and

[02:46] keep a client updated when things are both going good and especially when make up excuses saying your grandma's in the hospital or your computer exploded I've seen that so many times and finally in sixth place we have Talent which Yes

[03:01] means it's not as important as you might think but also doesn't mean it should be skipped so continue working on your craft study other creators and take courses on how to improve for example when I wanted to start learning more

[03:13] about YouTube I took courses on skillshare from creators like Ali abdall search I was able to find a ton of courses on thumbnail design as well and skillshare is an online learning community that allows creators like the

[03:27] that cover the information tricks and hacks they have learned from making successful channels which means that you can learn what other creators have learned in years and thousands of uploads all within as little as a few

[03:41] to learn secret techniques for improving will help with being more reliable and your flexibility down the road so to improve all six characteristics at once you'll want to start by studying courses

[03:54] from reputable creators that way you'll also be capitalizing on the economic principle of scar it which simply means that the rarer you are the more in demand you'll be and the more you can charge and the good news is that I've

[04:06] partnered with skillshare to give 500 people 30 days for free and 40% off their first year of membership so click the link in my description below and with that you're going to want to start working with YouTubers through inbound

[04:19] and outbound leads first we have outbound which just means you reach out to a Creator via email or by social media like Twitter most designers use the spray and pre method which involves sending out a ton of copy pasted emails

[04:32] or messages hoping to get a few responses their messages usually look something like this hey bro I'm graphic designer of 7 years and I noticed your yep yep yep yep and I can design High

[04:45] CTR thumbnails for your channel check out my portfolio and I promise you that the average designer success rate with this strategy is incredibly low as most YouTubers simply aren't responding to this successful YouTubers get this exact

[04:59] day and also don't really have time to read through your entire email check made in the style they want respond your email put you through a trial wait for the trial review the trial and finally decide if they want to hire you or not

[05:12] and if you think that's bad multiply that by a th000 because the 1,000 other designers in their DMS are expecting the Creator to do the exact same thing with their message so don't do this instead here's what you should do first don't

[05:26] thumbnails could be improved next C out the backstory in yapping start with two value in a quantifiable way which might include referen in clients you have that you've worked on and then offer to make them a thumbnail for free but wait

[05:42] I know my worth I don't want to make a free thumbnail get out of this mindset yes you'll lose a few hours of time that you won't get paid for but it'll eventually pay itself off and more in the long run because if you're able to

[05:54] offer them a thumbnail that's better than what they currently have at a rate literally zero reason to tell you no you'll lock them in long term and not only get paid by them long term but also pick up on their connections knowledge

[06:07] you so in the grand scheme of things it's 100% worth it going back to the email or DM you're writing keep it short and sweet and literally just say hey I'm X I'm a thumbnail designer of seven years and I redesigned the thumbnail for

[06:21] your x video if you like it reply to this email and we'll talk about working together long term feel free to use the thumbnail regardless your name now if if they don't respond to you don't assume they aren't interested according to data

[06:33] 80% of client conversions need around five follow-ups but for YouTubers I days after your first message then if week but if they still don't respond then just drop it and move on eventually

[06:46] though you'll start to get some clients and if you're providing a great service you'll start to receive inbound messages which just means YouTubers are reaching out to you instead of the other way around how referrals YouTubers interact

[06:59] Freelancers to each other all the time and in fact I'd say about 60% of the worked with have come from YouTuber friends who refer them to me so focus on building highquality relationships with

[07:12] clients and then ask them to recommend you to other clients it's a small ask be more than happy to help you if you've worked together for a while you can also Freelancers upload videos they've worked on and receive verification through

[07:26] reviews and vouches when working with a client offer a discount in exchange for verifying the work and providing a review this serves as social proof of your quality as 90% of people Trust reviews when buying a product or service

[07:40] results on Twitter and maybe Instagram so that you can start building up a fan base which you can eventually turn into an email list or something else to get you even more clients and speaking of an email list make sure to sign up to Mine

[07:53] by heading to Nate wealth.com or using the link in the description below for access to the tutorial on how one of my designers makes my thumbnails you'll also get weekly YouTube articles and a ton of free resources if you sign up so

[08:06] ton of free resources if you sign up so make sure you don't miss out