A comprehensive list of resources for making viral YouTube thumbnails with AI tools

This is the hottest AI side-hustle right now.

You can learn it in 1 week and start making easy money with it.

Why easy? Because AI will create the image in 5 minutes and make you $250 per thumbnail.

Yes, this is not a joke. Its a real story covered by Rest Of World.

This is a deep-dive into the YouTube Thumbnail industry with links on how to make viral thumbnails and how many formats (yes, there is a finite number) are there so you can copy them.

And the best part? This skill can be used in other industries as well so you learn this skill once & can use it everywhere from Movie Posters to Ebook Designs to T-Shirt Designs to Big Banner Ads.

If you are looking for getting started videos that'll take you from 0 to 100 in the shortest possible time, you can watch all of these in the exact order as listed below:

1. How I Actually Make Viral Thumbnails
2. How to Make VIRAL THUMBNAILS like celebrities - Easy! 🔥
3. Top 21 Thumbnail Formats To Grow Fast On YouTube
4. The State of YouTube Thumbnails 2024: What's Working Now
5. how to make a killer thumbnail (for the 2024 algorithm)
6. How a Pro YouTuber Actually Makes Thumbnails
7. Thumbnail Hacks YouTubers Use To Hook You
8. How to literally force people to click your videos
9. A YouTube Channel specializing in Thumbnails

But if you are short on time and want to learn everything in ~40 minutes, then just watch #1 and #2.

That's more than enough to get you started on the journey to making thumbnails.

If you love reading, then I recommend How To Make Effective Thumbnails (Digital Bundle) by Jay Alto on Gumroad plus his free resources.

You can also follow Twitter Accounts specializing in Thumbnails and resources like Thumbnails101.

But what thumbnails should I practice with?

Well, it depends on your niche.

I used to watch a lot of YouTube videos so I have a list of channels that have the best Thumbnails in Startups, Marketing, Business, and Entrepreneurship niche:

1. https://www.youtube.com/@AlexHormozi/videos
2. https://www.youtube.com/@MrBeast/videos
3. https://www.youtube.com/@MagnatesMedia/videos
4. https://www.youtube.com/@starterstory/videos
5. https://www.youtube.com/@aisamsonreal/videos
6. https://www.youtube.com/@FutureTechPilot/videos
7. https://www.youtube.com/@glibatree/videos

Just try to recreate thumbnails shown in these channels (Pro-Tip: Sort by Popular) to practice creating 100s of Thumbnails.

Remember, its a volume game. You will be confident in making thumbnails in 5 minutes when you have already done making it 100x.

But don't forget to keep the quality high otherwise you'll learn nothing.

But how do I create it? Glad, you asked.

You use Midjourney. Why? Because its simply the most beautiful AI image generator out there.

Yes, if you know how to use Stable Diffusion and Dall-E, you can use them but they are a lot harder to learn.

Just buy a $10/month Midjourney subscription and be done with it.

Midjourney has a showcase page you can use for inspiration.

How do you learn Midjourney? Well, there's countless channels on YouTube and tons of courses on Udemy and Teachable.

I'll recommend a few courses here from Udemy, Teachable, and Gumroad:

1. Learn to Create AI ART by Samson Vowles
2. Masters of Midjourney by Christian Heidorn
3. Midjourney Mastery: Unleashing Your Artistic Vision with AI
4. Create Beautiful Imagery with Midjourney A.I.
5. Midjourney V6 - Photorealistic Cinematic AI Photography Style Guide
6. The Perfect Guide: Learning and Mastering Midjourney
7. Ultimate Midjourney PRO Creator Kit. [35 Guides To Hack Visual Content Creation with Midjourney]

Or you can watch YouTube videos as they cover everything but they aren't as structured as courses:

1. How I make 5000$ a Month using Midjourney
2. How I make 5000$ a Month using Midjourney PART 2
3. How I make 5000$ a Month using Midjourney PART 3
4. Complete Beginners Guide to Midjourney V6!
5. The ULTIMATE Beginners Guide to Midjourney in 2024
6. Midjourney AI - Tutorial for Beginners in 12 MINS! [ UPDATED 2024 ]
7. 32 Midjourney Tips for Beginners in 2023! (Become a PRO!)
8. Midjourney Tutorial: GET STARTED in 2024
9. A Perfect Midjourney Prompt Formula (Great for Beginners or Advanced Users)
10. How AI "Artists" are making money with Midjourney right now
11. MidJourney MASTERY Beginner's Guide - EVERYTHING You Need to Know! (AI Art Tutorial 2023)

These aren't ordered in anyway so watch them to your liking.

Okay, so now you've learned this skill. How do you get paid?

You simply do free work for YouTubers permissionlessly.

Jack Butcher popularized the term "Permissionless Apprenticeship"

"If you want to catch the attention of someone you admire, give yourself a job working for them." ~ Jack Butcher on Twitter

Someone even wrote a summary of the course if you want to get the gist but I recommend getting the course as its only $1.

Now you know how to do the work but where to find them?

You can find them on YouTube but there's a better idea.

Use YT Jobs and sort by Thumbnail Designer to find real jobs from YouTubers.

Once you have a profile and some clients, you can ask them to Vouch for you and give you Testimonials.

And since YouTube isn't dying and thumbnail is the most important thing to grow on YouTube, this job is never going to go away.

You can be confident that if you learn this right, it will make money for you forever.

If you need more "reach out" tips, watch this video by Alex Hormozi as he gives a nice way to follow up with people who are hiring without being annoying.

Finally, if you need inspiration for World-Class prompts, visit Promptbase and search for "youtube" to find youtube-related thumbnails. You can sort by Midjourney to find Midjourney-specific YouTube thumbnails.

That's it!

Now you can go make YouTube Thumbnails using Midjourney to earn an extra $10k/month.

Remember, images are used everywhere and in the attention economy, great images get all the attention as humans are visual animals.

This post was first covered in my daily newsletter Startup Spells 🪄

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