Feedback on latest video/channel

[Thomas James]

Hi All,

Please can you give me some feedback on my latest video/overall channel. I’ve just discussed with my sister who is taking graphic design at Uni and she’s massively helped improve my thumbnails (latest video only so far), so I feel like when my videos start ranking higher in searches they will be clicked more often.

I’ve also recently purchased a tripod to keep recordings steady, further plans are to improve the lighting/sound quality and try to bring more enthusiasm & hand movement (excitement) into my videos.

I’ve only just started my channel and plan to put out consistent content, is there anything I can work on/improve to help rank my videos higher? I’ve added lots of tags to the video, got the title, description, tags, hashtags all consistent with what is said in the video, I suppose my channel just has to grow a little bit first past the initial 10-20 subscribers before I start ranking higher.

Any further tips or things I could work on??

Latest video is here -

 

[Min/Max Munchking]

Put the text on the left side, the video length is displayed in the lower right corner of the thumbnail and it will most likely cover the "... cut to 0.01%" part on mobile phones, which seems to be the majority of YT traffic, so people won't be able to read the full information on their end.

I'm no graphic designer, but through my individual testing, I have sufficient reason to believe that wider font = better CTR overall, so put yourself more to the side and stretch those letters more so that they are easier to read.

 

[Thomas James]

Thanks! Very true, I was trying to experiment, sometimes on the left, sometimes on the right, top, bottom... but I should be mindful of where the video length & additionally title will be.

Great advice on the font width, I’ll increase it so that more of the screen is covered.

Providing my thumbnails & title are appealing and my SEO all matches up, is it just a case of waiting for my videos to progressively rank higher and higher in YT searches and eventually start getting picked up by the algorithm?

Do you think there’s anything else I could improve on? Other than being more enthusiastic... I was thinking about getting some decorations too to spice up the background a bit...

 

[Min/Max Munchking]

Thanks! Very true, I was trying to experiment, sometimes on the left, sometimes on the right, top, bottom... but I should be mindful of where the video length & additionally title will be.

Great advice on the font width, I’ll increase it so that more of the screen is covered.

Providing my thumbnails & title are appealing and my SEO all matches up, is it just a case of waiting for my videos to progressively rank higher and higher in YT searches and eventually start getting picked up by the algorithm?

Do you think there’s anything else I could improve on? Other than being more enthusiastic... I was thinking about getting some decorations too to spice up the background a bit...

Test everything indiscriminately. What you like and what your audience likes are two vastly different things in 90%+ cases.

Also, patience. Loads and loads and loads of patience. This is a different game, the one where "I'll do X & Y, so surely Z will be the end result." is not one of the lines in the rulebook. In fact, there's hardly a rulebook at all.
You make a video, you're sure is your best yet, it flops hard and you get frustrated. Then, frustrated like that, you just half-assedly slap together another video a few days later and say "eff it..." , not expecting anything. Suddenly, it goes micro/mini/semi-viral, relative to your channel's size and authority. You have no clue why or how, but you're like "OK, that was interesting." Then, you do this more and more and you invariably start noticing patterns, certain things your audience and the YT algo respond to, certain things they don't.

New channels still blow up, "overnight" success is kinda still a thing, spam content still circumvents filters, I see it happen every now and then. However, don't count on it to happen to you. Think longterm, upload as often as you can, don't worry too much about the schedule and missing the regular upload intervals. My channel is proof that the YT algo really doesn't give a crap how often you upload as long as you eventually produce something that it can serve to those interested in the topic. Try to target lower hanging fruit first, topics that might not be as popular, but for that reason also don't have as much competition either. You will eventually pick up enough steam and data in analytics to maybe expect a bit bigger push by the YT algo. Don't even think about buying views, likes, comments, sub4sub or any of that nonsense which YT algo easily picks up on and punishes your channel, possibly forever.

The growth is gradual and then sudden and then it halts and slows down and stops again and then you think "crap, my channel's dying" and then suddenly you blow up again. It's a rollercoaster at times. If you just keep uploading consistently over a long period of time and your videos do appeal to a certain section of the global audience, you will, first, get better at making those videos, new videos will be objectively be better than you old ones because we humans tend to get better at things we do over and over again. Eventually, you'll get recommended to more and more people and maybe even start getting a bigger push like I'm recently experiencing with my channel.

Your potential reach is certainly much, much wider than mine. All people are interested in finances at least to some extent, especially now that probably 40% of population is in major financial and employment turmoil. Only very, very small audience even knows about Dungeons & Dragons though, yet I'm still getting tens of thousands of views lately. So, use this to your advantage, maybe try out a wider range of topics and see which sub-niche has more potential for short-term and long-term growth.

Good luck.

 

[Thomas James]

Test everything indiscriminately. What you like and what your audience likes are two vastly different things in 90%+ cases.

Also, patience. Loads and loads and loads of patience. This is a different game, the one where "I'll do X & Y, so surely Z will be the end result." is not one of the lines in the rulebook. In fact, there's hardly a rulebook at all.
You make a video, you're sure is your best yet, it flops hard and you get frustrated. Then, frustrated like that, you just half-assedly slap together another video a few days later and say "eff it..." , not expecting anything. Suddenly, it goes micro/mini/semi-viral, relative to your channel's size and authority. You have no clue why or how, but you're like "OK, that was interesting." Then, you do this more and more and you invariably start noticing patterns, certain things your audience and the YT algo respond to, certain things they don't.

New channels still blow up, "overnight" success is kinda still a thing, spam content still circumvents filters, I see it happen every now and then. However, don't count on it to happen to you. Think longterm, upload as often as you can, don't worry too much about the schedule and missing the regular upload intervals. My channel is proof that the YT algo really doesn't give a crap how often you upload as long as you eventually produce something that it can serve to those interested in the topic. Try to target lower hanging fruit first, topics that might not be as popular, but for that reason also don't have as much competition either. You will eventually pick up enough steam and data in analytics to maybe expect a bit bigger push by the YT algo. Don't even think about buying views, likes, comments, sub4sub or any of that nonsense which YT algo easily picks up on and punishes your channel, possibly forever.

The growth is gradual and then sudden and then it halts and slows down and stops again and then you think "crap, my channel's dying" and then suddenly you blow up again. It's a rollercoaster at times. If you just keep uploading consistently over a long period of time and your videos do appeal to a certain section of the global audience, you will, first, get better at making those videos, new videos will be objectively be better than you old ones because we humans tend to get better at things we do over and over again. Eventually, you'll get recommended to more and more people and maybe even start getting a bigger push like I'm recently experiencing with my channel.

Your potential reach is certainly much, much wider than mine. All people are interested in finances at least to some extent, especially now that probably 40% of population is in major financial and employment turmoil. Only very, very small audience even knows about Dungeons & Dragons though, yet I'm still getting tens of thousands of views lately. So, use this to your advantage, maybe try out a wider range of topics and see which sub-niche has more potential for short-term and long-term growth.

Good luck.

Thank you very much for your feedback and encouragement. With experimenting I guess it’s a case of trying everything and seeing how best the viewers react (not what I think is best)

Yes, I think while everyone (including me) would love overnight success, I’ve managed to convince myself it’s not going to happen to me and that actually, patience and uploading consistently for the long term is ok and will likely yield better results ultimately as it’ll give me time to test different things and improve my content.

I think, so far, I’m not necessarily doing anything ‘wrong’, just need to keep testing different things like thumbnails, titles, enthusiasm etc and see what the audience responds best to