Field notes
Playbooks, teardowns and the occasional argument — everything we have learned helping creators grow across every major platform.
RPM vs CPM confuses most creators. One describes what advertisers pay, the other what you keep. Here is the difference and which to track.
How much YouTubers make comes down to four numbers, not one. Here is the calculation, why niche matters more than views, and what the headline figures leave out.
A YouTube handle is the @name people can mention and search. Here are the rules, how to check availability, and what changing one actually breaks.
Facebook image size by placement: feed posts, link cards, Stories, cover photos and ads - plus the crops that differ between desktop and mobile.
LinkedIn image size by placement: feed posts, link cards, document posts, profile and company banners - and the mobile crop that decides what is seen.
Twitter image sizes on X: 16:9 for single images, 1200x628 for link cards, and the timeline crop that decides what people actually see.
TikTok video size is 1080x1920 at 9:16. The harder part is the safe zone - the caption, the action rail and the username cover a third of your frame.
A YouTube page publishes far more about a video than the interface draws. Here is the full list of fields, what each one controls, and how to read them.
YouTube allows 100 characters in a title, but search, suggested and mobile each cut it far sooner. Here is where each surface truncates.
YouTube thumbnail size is 1280x720 at 16:9 - but the number that matters is the 170 pixels wide it is actually viewed at.
YouTube shows three hashtags above your title, ignores every hashtag past 60, and may remove over-tagged videos from search. Here is the working number.
Instagram image sizes by placement: feed, portrait, carousel, Reels cover, Stories and profile. Three ratios cover all of them.