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Hello everyone, I'm Jonathan aka "UberDanger" aka "Mild caution", and today I'll be writing this guide about gateway videos. Before I start explaining what they are, and how they're essential to your growth, I'd like to introduce myself shortly.
Most of you probably don't know me, since I'm not exactly the most active member on this forum. I've written a few guides in the past on here, here's a link to a few of those:
Today I'll be focusing on "Gateway videos", I've used the term loosely in several of these guides, and also just in general on this forum in the past. To explain shortly, what are gateway videos?
As the name suggests, they are videos which are supposed to act as a gateway for people to your channel. Simple enough right? at least it sounds that way. First we have to look at which factors that decide whether a video is gonna drive traffic to your channel.
First of all, views. For a video to turn into an effective gateway video for a larger channel like my own, it will need to have a few hundred thousand views, to effectively drive traffic to my channel. Basically when a video is big enough to grow on it's own and attract traffic, is when it's effectively big enough to become a gateway video. You can of course also refer to a gateway video on a smaller scale, but I'll be using my own channel as an example since it's the one I have the most experience with. Naturally the more views a gateway video has, the better a gateway video it is. Both in terms of aggregating viewers, but also in that if people see a video with million of views, they actually have a tendency to subscribe more often.
Now everything I wrote is good and dandy, but HOW do you turn a video into a gateway video? A couple factors are obvious, and should already be considered when creating content. Does it incentivize people to subscribe for more? If so how? And how can you improve that?
One of the main things that make a video grow, is watch time, and consistent viewership in general. A "gateway series" is a series of videos that are all linked together, and are all big enough to be traffic driving machines. My main series "the adventures of full ad/ap" is an example of a gateway series, which is really great for exponential growth. People click on one, and click on the next, and click on the next etc.
This gives me a really big watch time on all the videos, making them all grow on their own, but for each video that gets big it also drives traffic to all the other videos. So the more videos I make for this series, the more I effectively increase my exponential growth.
So now you have a basic understanding of gateway videos and gateway series, but how in the hell does that benefit you? Especially if you're a smaller channel? Well first of all it will give you a better understanding of traffic source building in general, and what I mean when I write that in my other guides, or when you ever see that term referred to. On top of that you'll also be better equipped to act accordingly if one of your videos is turning into a gateway video, perhaps turn that into a series?
If you have any questions post them below, I know this isn't a conventional topic for me to write a "guide" on, however a LOT of people have been requesting that I elaborate on this term that I throw around so loosely. Any other guides in specific you'd want me to write?
Most of you probably don't know me, since I'm not exactly the most active member on this forum. I've written a few guides in the past on here, here's a link to a few of those:
- The small stay small, the big get bigger. A comprehensive guide to growth stages on Youtube.
http://yttalk.com/threads/the-small-stay-small-the-big-get-bigger.55288/
- The Ultimate Reddit guide. Everything you need to know about how Reddit works and operates.
http://yttalk.com/threads/the-ultimate-reddit-guide.85984/
- How to grow a large gaming channel. A guide mainly focused around key points of growing a large gaming channel on Youtube.
http://yttalk.com/threads/how-to-grow-a-large-gaming-channel.90605/
- Overall growth guide for small/new channels
http://yttalk.com/threads/overall-growth-guide-for-new-small-channels.104571/
Today I'll be focusing on "Gateway videos", I've used the term loosely in several of these guides, and also just in general on this forum in the past. To explain shortly, what are gateway videos?
As the name suggests, they are videos which are supposed to act as a gateway for people to your channel. Simple enough right? at least it sounds that way. First we have to look at which factors that decide whether a video is gonna drive traffic to your channel.
First of all, views. For a video to turn into an effective gateway video for a larger channel like my own, it will need to have a few hundred thousand views, to effectively drive traffic to my channel. Basically when a video is big enough to grow on it's own and attract traffic, is when it's effectively big enough to become a gateway video. You can of course also refer to a gateway video on a smaller scale, but I'll be using my own channel as an example since it's the one I have the most experience with. Naturally the more views a gateway video has, the better a gateway video it is. Both in terms of aggregating viewers, but also in that if people see a video with million of views, they actually have a tendency to subscribe more often.
Now everything I wrote is good and dandy, but HOW do you turn a video into a gateway video? A couple factors are obvious, and should already be considered when creating content. Does it incentivize people to subscribe for more? If so how? And how can you improve that?
One of the main things that make a video grow, is watch time, and consistent viewership in general. A "gateway series" is a series of videos that are all linked together, and are all big enough to be traffic driving machines. My main series "the adventures of full ad/ap" is an example of a gateway series, which is really great for exponential growth. People click on one, and click on the next, and click on the next etc.
This gives me a really big watch time on all the videos, making them all grow on their own, but for each video that gets big it also drives traffic to all the other videos. So the more videos I make for this series, the more I effectively increase my exponential growth.
So now you have a basic understanding of gateway videos and gateway series, but how in the hell does that benefit you? Especially if you're a smaller channel? Well first of all it will give you a better understanding of traffic source building in general, and what I mean when I write that in my other guides, or when you ever see that term referred to. On top of that you'll also be better equipped to act accordingly if one of your videos is turning into a gateway video, perhaps turn that into a series?
If you have any questions post them below, I know this isn't a conventional topic for me to write a "guide" on, however a LOT of people have been requesting that I elaborate on this term that I throw around so loosely. Any other guides in specific you'd want me to write?