Log into your YouTube channel. Click on ‘upload video’ in the top right-hand corner.
The screen below will then appear.
Select your file, and follow the process to upload your video. Do not forget hashtags, descriptions, and tags for your video.
The last step of the uploading process will ask you about the visibility of your video.
Click on the blue ‘share privately’ link. A dialogue box will open, where you need to enter the email addresses of the people that you would like to share the YouTube video with privately, as seen in the screenshot below.
Once you have added in the email addresses – and remember, you can share your private YouTube video with up to fifty people – click on ‘done.’ Make sure that you separate each email address with space.
The next screen will show you confirmation of who you have opted to share your YouTube video with.
Now, usually, you can send the link to your YouTube video to people, and they are able to click the link and watch it, but if your YouTube video is private, this is not possible. They have to be on the invited list to be able to access it.
While there are many benefits to keeping a YouTube video private, sometimes you may have uploaded a video, set it to private, and then decided that you want to share the link. To share your private YouTube video, you need to go to your YouTube Studio.
Click on videos on the left-hand side and then find the video that you want to share. Click on Get shareable link.
By doing this, you will have a shareable link that you can share with your family, friends, and whoever it is that you want.
What are the advantages of keeping a video on YouTube private?
We briefly mentioned this above, but while most of the time you want as many views as possible on a YouTube video, especially if you are aiming to raise revenue from it, occasionally you need to or want to keep a video secret.
If your videos are very private to you, or you have a confidential business project, for example, then the anonymity of a private YouTube video is perfect.
Other benefits of keeping a YouTube video private include the following:
- Sharing videos with loved ones: It’s a good forum to share special moments privately if your relatives live far away.
- Your own private video library: Some people have art collections. Other people have records of wine or comic books. It is no different when it comes to videos – they are moments especially for you that you do not want to share but you want to keep.
- Storing business data: This is an excellent choice if you want to share business plans with staff, but you don’t want your rivals to see them (like important training videos).
- Saves storage space: The private environment is a perfect place to store loads of videos instead of running out of room on your computer.
Knowing how to share a private YouTube video means that you get all the benefits of having it kept private while being able to share it with selected people that you trust and want to give access to. No decision is permanent, though; you can make public YouTube videos private and vice versa in the future if you so wish.
