HOW TO MAKE A THUMBNAIL FOR YOUTUBE Get More Clicks, More Views & Better Rankings... For FREE!

Now that we've discussed youtube thumbnail sizes and best practices, let's get in to the fun stuff. It's time to create your own youtube thumbnail for free!

To create this thumbnail, we’re going to be using a free tool called Canva. We love canva, but there are a TON of tools out there that you can use - from paid tools like Adobe Photoshop, to other free options like Snappa and Crello.

If you’ve never used Canva before, you can simply create a free account through Facebook, Google, or your email.

Once you are in, click on the green ‘Create a Design’ button. One great thing about Canva is that they provide templates for some of the most popular types of images you’d ever need to create.
In this case, from the dropdown, select Youtube Thumbnail.

Once you select ‘Youtube Thumbnail,’ you’ll be take to the image editor. This is where the fun begins.

1. Select The Image You Want to Use for Your Thumbnail

The first thing we are going to do is select an image for the thumbnail. We’re going to follow the best practices mentioned above, and we’ll use a ‘talking head’ photo.

In this case, let’s assume that I created a 5 or 10 second clip at the end of creating my video where I posed a bunch of different ways. I’m going to scrub through that video, and simply take a screenshot of the pose that I think will work best for my thumbnail.

Below is the image I'll be working with:

(If you just took photos of yourself with your phone or something, that’s completely fine! Go ahead and look through what you have and pick the best one)

Once you’ve got the image you want to use, we’re going to upload it to Canva.

2. Upload and Adjust Your Photo in Canva

So, back in Canva, click on ‘uploads’ in the left. Then just click on the ‘Upload an Image’ button to get your picture in to Canva.

Once it’s uploaded, you can just click on the picture and it will become the background.

After it's loaded into the background, just resize the picture so that it takes up the whole background, and move it around so that you can fit the text where you want it to. (Ideally NOT covering your face!)

You can also adjust the image within canva. You can click on the ‘Filter’ link and you’ll see a ton of filters similar to what Instagram offers. Personally, I usually just use the ‘Adjust’ feature. This allows me to manually adjust the photo a bit.

If you got a good photo, you probably won’t have to do much. We just want to focus on a couple of things that will help the image pop off of the page.

• Decrease the blur a little bit - this will actually sharpen your image
• Increase the saturation a bit (if needed)
• Increase the contrast to add a lot of sharpness to the colors

Now that we've got the background ready, it's time to add our text.

3. Adding Text to Your Youtube Thumbnail

Remember, when adding text to your thumbnail, that most people are going to see this thumbnail pretty small, so you don’t want to write a paragraph on here.

Your goal is to, in as few words as possible, convey the HOOK of the video on the thumbnail. WHY are people watching this video? WHAT are they going to get out of it?

Continuing with the example mentioned above, let’s say this video is going to be about ‘How to Create Youtube Thumbnails to Get More Clicks, More Views, and Improve Your Rankings - For FREE!’

We can’t fit all of that on the image, nor do we want to. Instead, we’ll trim it down and use something like ‘How to Make Youtube Thumbnails the Work!’

Let’s get to work.

First, let’s click on ‘Text’ on the left to access the text settings in Canva.

Now you have a lot of pre-made text layouts you can choose from, but I like to work with JUST the headings. So click on ‘Add Heading’ and type in some of your text.

I find it easier to figure out how I’m going to layout the text so I know how many text blocks I’ll need so I can move them around later. (This will make more sense soon.)

I’m going to use 4 headings, so I'll add 4 text blocks. This is how they will be laid out:

1. How to make
2. Youtube
3. Thumbnails
4. That Work

I’ll get those text blocks in there, and then choose the font and color I want to use. I like to use a CONDENSED font because it allows you to get more in there, and size them up more than if you used a regular font.

My go-to font for this is Bebas Neue - so just click on your text blocks and choose the font you want to use from the top. I also made my text white so that it stands out on my image. When you are done, it should look something similar to this.

Now what we want to do is make sure that not only the text is legible, but it POPS off the screen as well. To do this, I’m going to create some boxes behind the text to make it stand out.

To do that, you would just click on ‘Elements’ on left, and click on the Rectangle to add one to the image. HOLD OFF FOR A SECOND THOUGH - because if you want to finish this up real quick, you could just use one rectangle (or even a ‘gradient’) and make it the full size of the text area and you could be done.

If you go this route, in the Elements area, instead of choosing just a normal rectangle, you may want to choose something else, like a Gradient, to add some depth. Search 'Gradient' in the Elements search box and choose the square:

You can change the colors of the box to match your branding or to fit with whatever you want your final image to look like. In my case, this would look similar to what I have below:

While you could do just that and call it a day, let's go a little bit further and show you what's possible with Canva here.

Instead of creating just one box, I'm going to create 4 so that I have a different one for the background of EACH TEXT BLOCK I created. I'm going to start off with them being black.

Note that when you create your rectangles, they may be covering the text. We don't want that! To move them backwards, select the rectangle and click on Position, then click on the 'Backward' option until it's behind the text.

This is what we will end up with after I resize and position every rectangle:

Now we've only got some creative stuff to do. We'll change the color of some of the boxes and resize them and rotate them to make it interesting.

To do this, we're going to tap in to a really powerful feature in Canva: Grouping. We're going to group each text block with it's corresponding background box so we can move and resize them as a whole.

To do that:

1. Click on the first text block
2. Once it is selected, hold 'shift' on your keyboard and click on the background box right behind it.
3. Now, both the text block and the background box should be selected.
4. Then, just click on the 'Group' button up top.

Once this is done, you can now resize them as a group! This will really come in handy later.

With that done, I am now left with 4 different text blocks that are grouped with background boxes. Now all I need to do is resize them, rearrange them, rotate them and adjust the coloring to whatever I want, and I'm done.

NOTE: Even though these are grouped together, you can still click on the individual elements to edit them. So if you want to change the color of one of the background boxes, just click on it and you can edit the color

After doing that, I end up with something like this:

Once you are happy with the outcome of your thumbnail, all you need to do now is download it and get it up on Youtube!

4. Download Your Thumbnail & Add it to Youtube

To download your thumbnail, just click on the big 'Download' button in the top right. You have the option of downloading it in a few different formats, but use the suggested '.png' one as that will give you the best resolution. (This will also give you a bigger filesize but that's ok with Youtube.)

Now let's add your custom thumbnail to your Youtube video. This is super easy to do. Either as you are uploading your video, or once it has uploaded, simply scroll down to where you see the option to change the Thumbnail for the video and click on the 'custom thumbnail.'

If you've already uploaded your video, you can do this in 'Youtube Studio' by clicking on your account icon in the top right, and clicking on Youtube Studio.

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You've Now Created a Custom Thumbnail for Your Youtube Video!

So there you have it! A simple step by step process to make your own thumbnails for Youtube. If you get hung up on any step in the walkthrough above, don't forget to watch the Youtube video at the top of this post for a full video tutorial!

Remember, the YouTube thumbnail is one of the most IMPORTANT factors in getting clicks and views on your videos.

Make sure you put in the time to create these thumbnails, or at the very least, you can always find someone on Fiverr who can create them for you if you don't have time or would prefer to outsource it.

The important thing is to GET IT DONE and not rely on Youtube video frames. You made great content, let it be seen!