Which Thumbnail Is Best? (Let's break down thumbnails)

Sep '22 in Other

So recently I made a video called "I Changed My Past (You Can Too)" and so far it's been very well received and has my best retention ever, with almost 55% of people still watching by the end of the 6 minute video.

It doesn't seem to be getting pushed that hard by the algorithm yet, however I'm holding out hope because a video I made last year called "The Truth About The Law Of Assumption" didn't rank in search until nearly 4 months after it was published. (It's thumbnail is the third picture on this post, the video is about to cross 3,000 views)

Now the second thumbnail down there is the original thumbnail for the "I changed my past" video, however as Benedek pointed out, it's a little confusing and has too much going on, which is why I then created another thumbnail (The first image attached to this post), which is hopefully more clear and has less going on.

When I made the change, the CTR picked up a little bit, but after a day it's gone down and stayed relatively low.

Should I go back to the first thumbnail, or try and redesign the thumbnail all over again? I'm trying to rank in search for "How to change your past" or for "Neville Goddard Revision Technique".

From what I've seen, thumbnails designed to rank in search tend to break the "3 element" rule, and they can have a lot more going on in them and can have a lot more text (Hence how my thumbnail on "The Truth About The Law Of Assumption" managed to rank despite breaking lots of thumbnail rules)

Please give me some input and please share your thoughts on thumbnails, I feel like we can all learn a lot from this.

Stick with the space thumbnail, YouTube Just needs more time to find the audience

Go back to the original thumbnail, it's visually interesting and will get more clicks

Change the title to "The Truth About The Revision Technique" And create a thumbnail similar to the law of assumption thumbnail

Go back to the drawing board (Please share your thoughts with me in the comments)

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