Food Content Creators of YouTube

[foodtalk]

I've been creating videos for several months now and have put a good amount of effort into making each video I release special in its own way. Initially I shared a few select videos on reddit that I thought would be popular with the crowd but all I got were views (and a few likes) but no subscribers. It seems reddit doesn't work for small creators (as evident in the reddit findings thread posted a few days ago).

Today I came across a baking channel with 40k subscribers and visible content as far as one year back. The videos have no music or voice and the lack of talking in particular seems to be an attraction for commenters. The editing is basic with one angle used for the whole video. The top three videos have 500k+ views. Without an existing subscriber base, I've only seen viral videos reach that level. The most popular video has 900k+ views and 500 comments and is a video of a standard cake roll (it's exactly as it sounds). Could this have been view botted? I've compiled some stats in a screenshot: i.imgur.com/uXWZo1t.png
(#1 and #2 are the videos with absurd amount of views and #3 is more representative of the views of recent videos on the channel.)

Back to my own channel, I initially went the route of no talk but with added music. Later on I switched to added voiceovers + music in complicated recipes so viewers would easily understand what was going on without being flooded with on screen text. None of these trials seems to have brought in any subscriber base. Having done all the recommended, such as attractive thumbnails, keywords, descriptions, good audio, calls to action, and even closed captions - then seeing the above example, I am wondering what it is that I'm missing.

 

[adams eats]

OK here's what I think. If you look at the most successful cooking channels you'll notice one thing in common. They are all in front of the camera presenting themselves. A good channel is as much about the person as it is the food and that's where I think you should go. Channels like tasty are only popular because it's fiercely marketed and owned by buzzfeed with a big budget. (Give me a few ££££ an I can get millions of subs!). But also those type of videos cater for the Facebook audience. Quick 30 second clips for people scrolling through a news feed are not what youtube wants. Youtube wants good engaging long content, because as they move more and more towards tv, that's what will help you grow.

I still have a bunch load to learn, but my format seems to work, so I'd suggest you find what you're comfortable with and build around it. I have a really tiny kitchen with not so good lighting, so I'm always looking for new angles and editing techniques to help with that. Good luck, and if you need any help with anything feel free to shout