YouTube: Add custom thumbnail and do not show relational videos at end
Adding a custom thumbnail to a YouTube video is not hard. Google just wants to ensure the account is not being used by a spammer. So all you need to do to activated the custom thumbnail for your video is allow them to call or text you then you enter the number provided by Google. At that point you will now be able to upload a custom thumbnail.
Side Note: I create thumbnails by playing the video on my PC, pausing it and using a screen capture application like “Snipping Tool” to crop out a thumbnail and save it as a PNG file.
If you want to embed a video but do not want the relational video links at the end but want the custom thumbnail to load all you need to do is add “?rel=0” (zero) to your video’s URL. That tells YouTube not to load related videos and to load your thumbnail once the video plays thought.
Why would you want to perform these two actions?
- You are creating a training video that you want to be shown on YouTube.
- You created an advertisement video for your organization.
- You do not have much control over the relational videos that are displayed and one that has inappropriate content or thumbnail might be loaded at the end of your video. Like if you are a school and a related video related to sex education appears at the end of your video.
Hope that helps and let me know if you have any questions.
