How YouTube Cards Can Get An Extra 300 Music Fans Per Day
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Written by Omari
As a musician, you should've been waiting for YouTube to roll out this new feature forever!
And... It's finally here with YouTube Cards (which are progressively taking over annotations).
First Things First
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The Old YouTube Music Marketing Way
It's not completely gone yet, but I'm sure you're plenty familiar with YouTube annotations.
Those pop-up looking things that get in the way of you watching your favorite YouTube videos.
Sure, some people do click on those if you have good headline in them, and they do help with getting extra subscribers, but there's a HUGE problem with YouTube annotations.
They don't work on mobile devices!
50% of YouTube watchers are now viewing through their phones and tablets.
The New YouTube Music Marketing Way
YouTube cards are a new, sleeker looking annotation that works on mobile devices. You may have even seen a few of them by now.
That 'Click Here To D/L 2 Free Beats' in the upper right hand corner is a YouTube card.
You can set the times you want it to show up on your video and essentially DOUBLE your music fans per day when installing it since half the YouTube traffic is coming from mobile devices.
One YouTuber is even getting an extra 300 fans per day with this!
What The Cards Can Do
The new YouTube cards do much of the same things the traditional annotations can.
They can export people to:
- Other videos on your channel
- Merchandise
- Playlists
- Websites (EMAIL LIST!)
- Fundraising
What you need to do with them:
They're installed on a per video basis (you have to add them individually for now). Sadly, there is no bulk adding option for this. I had about 100 videos and had to suck it up and manually add them, and so will you for now.
5 Types of YouTube Cards
1) Merchandise Card: promote a creator’s licensed merchandise directly from the video – these are great for anyone selling physical products.
2) Fundraising card: links viewers directly to projects on whitelisted fundraising sites.
3) Video or playlist card: links to any other public YouTube video or playlist.
4) Fan Funding card: kind of like a donation button on your website. I'm personally against having these for musicians since I don't feel like we're charity, but if you want one, feel free.
Last but not least, the type of card that we use to drive fans to our sites and email lists…
5) Associated website card: link directly to your associated website from a card. This is by far the most important one for your music and I'll show you how to set it up.
How To Set The Cards Up
Sign into your YouTube account and head to the video manager. Select the video you want and you're going to see that (i) icon below your video.
Click on Add Card and you can drag the card wherever you want it to go, as well as add multiple cards in your video.
The card will show up for about 5-10 seconds, but whenever people roll their mouse over the video the (i) icon will show back up and they can click on it.
In order for you to drive people to an associated website, you're going to have to OWN the domain. This is why, yet again, I tell musicians you need to have your own website. You can't just have a SoundCloud page, but you guys have heard me rant about that enough.
Take Them To An Email List
If you'll look at one of my videos, you'll see I offer 2 free beats as a way for people to click through to my site.
That then takes them to my page where they can sign up for my email list since they're interested in the beats!
I also have one card for them to just go directly to my website if they want to buy the beat they're hearing.
The object is to get an email address though so you can keep in contact with your listeners.
When your song is ready to go, it's time to start promoting it to potential fans! Omari has the best organic promotion services money can buy. With packages for Spotify, TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, we will get your music the traffic and attention it deserves! Click below for more information.
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© 2025 Omari MC, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
© 2025 Omari MC, LLC. All Rights Reserved.