Getting people to sub and like, a small experiment

Ater

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I did a small experiment on my channel where I published three videos and tried different strategies to see what makes people sub and like. To make the numbers comparable all videos was similar types of videos inside the same niche, they where also published during a similar time of the year (just a few days in between each video). They all had similar audience retention and about the same amount of views (around 7K views with the highest one beaning around 7.3K and the lowest 6.8K). One of them was shorter by a decent amount compared to the others.

Here are the results, comments are just the original comments, not counting replies.

Video 1 (shorter video)Video 2Video 3
Like and subscribe?Did not ask them to like and subscribe.I asked them to like and subscribe at the end.Asked them twice to like and subscribe, once a few min into the video and once at the end.
Audience retention52.6%45.6%47.9%
Likes140176306
Likes/view0.0210.0260.042
Dislikes1426
New subs165178
Subs/view0.00240.00750.0101
Comments131217

I understand that this sample is to small for any serious research. There could be a difference in quality between the videos videos, maybe the one with the least subs where far worse than the others, maybe I just got lucky/unlucky with a video etc. I also wish all the video would have been about the same length.

But even considering these things I still found it interesting going through the numbers. Not counting the potential problems above there are a big difference in the number of likes and subs. Compare the number 0.0024 subs/view with 0.0101 subs/view, if you get 1 million views the difference is 2400 new subs compared to over 10K, that difference is huge!

That said even with this result I will probably never ask for subs/likes twice in a video again since I find it annoying and I'm pretty sure I got some dislikes from it and a comment or two about it. But consider the way audience retention go down during a video it may be worth asking for likes/subs earlier on in the video instead of at the end, if you can find a way to do that without annoying people. I wish I had made a video testing that combination.

Have you done any testing/experiments with your own channel and statistics? Have you found anything interesting? Please share!
 
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Dutchie Abroad

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I love these kinds of researches! The difference in likes and subs is quite significant, but I still wouldn't want to start a video with asking to like and sub, since they don't even know what kind of content they're watching. I'd say the dislikes are due to this as well, there are people who will instantly dislike a video if you say 'like and sub' in the beginning. I do think it's important to kinda 'remind' your audience to like the video in the end, since they're already thinking about the next video to watch and might click away too quick (i'm one of those xD).
 

Ater

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I love these kinds of researches! The difference in likes and subs is quite significant, but I still wouldn't want to start a video with asking to like and sub, since they don't even know what kind of content they're watching. I'd say the dislikes are due to this as well, there are people who will instantly dislike a video if you say 'like and sub' in the beginning. I do think it's important to kinda 'remind' your audience to like the video in the end, since they're already thinking about the next video to watch and might click away too quick (i'm one of those xD).
This wasn't at the start, maybe I should have been clearer about that, the video was around 10 min long and this was a few min in. But I agree to what you said, I would not put it at the start. But maybe if you find a really good way to do it without annoying viewers it could be worth trying to put them somewhere in the middle instead of at the end and compare the results.
 
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markkaz

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Thanks for sharing! like you stated, it is a small sample but stats are stats. Likes went up 2x but dislikes 5x!
Subs went up 5x as well. I would use the call to action over-use sparingly as I wouldn't want to annoy or lose subscribers.
 
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zerocache

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Nice! :)

What you can do is run this exercise a few more times to see if there's truly something meaningful here. I'm not saying that there isn't now, but I would be hard pressed not to point out that the content may have played a role too.

So it needs to be tested some more so the content's influence isn't as significant.
 

Crown

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Interesting research. Thanks for posting. :up:
 
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Ater

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Nice! :)

What you can do is run this exercise a few more times to see if there's truly something meaningful here. I'm not saying that there isn't now, but I would be hard pressed not to point out that the content may have played a role too.

So it needs to be tested some more so the content's influence isn't as significant.
I agree, more data would be nice. The problem is that it's very hard and time consuming to produce similar content inside the same niche to be released at the same time and hope to get similar results with views and audience retention, I was probably very lucky this time.
 
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GrannyGamer

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Thanks for sharing these results, it's very interesting and could definitely be tweaked by a welcome to new people watching the channel, etc. I'm keen to keep updated on this thread :)
 
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I did a small experiment on my channel where I published three videos and tried different strategies to see what makes people sub and like. To make the numbers comparable all videos was similar types of videos inside the same niche, they where also published during a similar time of the year (just a few days in between each video). They all had similar audience retention and about the same amount of views (around 7K views with the highest one beaning around 7.3K and the lowest 6.8K). One of them was shorter by a decent amount compared to the others.

Here are the results, comments are just the original comments, not counting replies.

Video 1 (shorter video)Video 2Video 3
Like and subscribe?Did not ask them to like and subscribe.I asked them to like and subscribe at the end.Asked them twice to like and subscribe, once a few min into the video and once at the end.
Audience retention52.6%45.6%47.9%
Likes140176306
Likes/view0.0210.0260.042
Dislikes1426
New subs165178
Subs/view0.00240.00750.0101
Comments131217

I understand that this sample is to small for any serious research. There could be a difference in quality between the videos videos, maybe the one with the least subs where far worse than the others, maybe I just got lucky/unlucky with a video etc. I also wish all the video would have been about the same length.

But even considering these things I still found it interesting going through the numbers. Not counting the potential problems above there are a big difference in the number of likes and subs. Compare the number 0.0024 subs/view with 0.0101 subs/view, if you get 1 million views the difference is 2400 new subs compared to over 10K, that difference is huge!

That said even with this result I will probably never ask for subs/likes twice in a video again since I find it annoying and I'm pretty sure I got some dislikes from it and a comment or two about it. But consider the way audience retention go down during a video it may be worth asking for likes/subs earlier on in the video instead of at the end, if you can find a way to do that without annoying people. I wish I had made a video testing that combination.

Have you done any testing/experiments with your own channel and statistics? Have you found anything interesting? Please share!
Very interesting results. My guess would have been video 1 being the best. I have done requests twice in a video before, but just like you, I get annoyed with it too lol. Thanks so much for giving us some insight on this :)
 
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