How To Create Irresistible Thumbnails (and blow up on YouTube)

**David Altizer** (0:00)
I'm making over $100,000. The Max Fosh one that we just looked at, I think I spent 8 hours on it. That would take me an hour or 2 hours now. And then within a month, I went from no experience being a thumbnail designer to working with Curtis Connor, Max Fosh, Hayden Hillier-Smith. I started at $200 per thumbnail. I'm now charging $500 or $600. It's not just the thumbnail that makes the video successful, it's the idea, it's the video itself. You know, if you're a thumbnail designer or you're a YouTuber, one of the most important things to do is...

**Richard** (0:28)
So hi David, thanks for coming on the 1of10 Podcast.

**David Altizer** (0:32)
Hi, thanks for having me. This is awesome.

**Richard** (0:33)
Hyped to talk all and everything about thumbnail designs and we also have the number one YouTube strategist in the world, Vexion. For the viewers who don't know you, can you tell them what you do and with who you work with? Sure.

**David Altizer** (0:47)
Hi, my name is David Altizer. My Twitter handle is dvdaltizer. I host a weekly space called Thumbnail Thursday and have a little community of thumbnail artists been enjoying that for the last year I've been doing that. But I'm 33 years old. I've been a full time filmmaker and YouTuber before I ever even did thumbnails. I did that for six years as a YouTuber. And then before that, like over a decade of filmmaking. And so it's only been the last year that I've been an actual thumbnail designer by trade, working with different creators ranging from Curtis Connor, Max Fosh, Jolly, Chuckle Sandwich, many others. Over 100 million clicks under the thumbnails I've made just in the last year. It's been a lot of fun. And maybe my unique trait is that I do come from a filmmaking background, a cinematography background, photography background. And I was a YouTuber myself, so I understand how the whole thing works. I know how to make YouTube videos because I made hundreds and hundreds of them as a full time creator. I was the host of a channel called Indie Mogul, which is one of the largest filmmaking channels on YouTube, over 1.3 million subs or something. It was a ton of fun, but I just kind of fell out of love with that genre. And yeah, just kind of like fell into this whole thumbnail thing, and it's been a total blast, and I've enjoyed it a ton.

**Richard** (2:11)
So you said you made thumbnails for Max Fosh. Is there one that we can go over the whole process from beginning to end so the viewer understands how it all goes normally? And maybe you can tell the viewers, how did the relationship start? How did you get him as a client?

**David Altizer** (2:26)
So Max Fosh is an incredible creator. He's British, and he went to Uni, as they call it, with one of my mutual friends, Hayden Hillier-Smith, who was Logan Paul's editor, and has obviously made a name for himself as the most popular editor on YouTube. And I met him back when I was the host of Indie Mogul. He was a fan of Indie Mogul, and I used to live in California, and so we became friends. And I started working with Hayden, because he was like literally one of the first clients that I ever worked with, because he was just my friend. And he gave me a shot, and I shared some of my work. And then Max saw my work on Twitter, because I just shared it. And he was like, if you're good enough for Hayden, you're good enough for me. So that was it. That all happened within a month. I went from being this filmmaking YouTuber guy to quitting that, and then within a month, I went from no experience being a thumbnail designer to working with Curtis Connor, Max Fosh, Hayden Hillier-Smith, and like one or two other freelance clients. So it was really kind of a wild ride. That was last June. Yeah, so that's how I met him. We've done a handful of thumbnails. Their schedule is so crazy. Sometimes they just make it themselves. So I haven't done the last two or three thumbnails, but I think I've done like six or seven thumbnails for him over the last year.

**Richard** (3:43)
Wow.

**David Altizer** (3:43)
This one is the best performing one that we made. This is the I broke laws in front of the police thumbnail. I think the video has well over six million views now.

**Richard** (3:55)
Yeah, 6.6 million.

**David Altizer** (3:57)
That's almost at seven.

**Richard** (3:58)
Yeah.

**David Altizer** (3:58)