Is Organic Growth Within the YouTube Ecosystem Dead?

itisALLAN

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Hey guys,

I've been reading and listening to a ton about growing a YouTube channel in 2020 and one of the common themes that come up is posting and sharing your content across your Social channels.

I am curious to get the YTTalk community's take on whether or not you think it is possible to grow your YouTube channel without relying on external traffic sources?

I have my opinion that I will share once there is a couple of replies so that I don't influence anyone's opinion.

Looking forward to reading your responses!
 

BillSanDiego

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I get around 20% traffic from my blog. Since my YouTube stats are tanking over the last 6 weeks (reason unknown to me), i"m putting more efforts into my blog to get more traffic from this external resource -- it became a pure SEO play to me. So, if you do lots of SEO on a website, you'll get you traffic from there. In fact, when I started that blog helped me to get more trust on YouTube -- https://www.digitalwelt.org/blogs/lebenusa (it's German)
 
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Boris Qs

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Hey guys,

I've been reading and listening to a ton about growing a YouTube channel in 2020 and one of the common themes that come up is posting and sharing your content across your Social channels.

I am curious to get the YTTalk community's take on whether or not you think it is possible to grow your YouTube channel without relying on external traffic sources?

I have my opinion that I will share once there is a couple of replies so that I don't influence anyone's opinion.

Looking forward to reading your responses!
Definitely if you know what you are doing. Knowing the type of videos to create videos that many are looking for...Optimizing it for higher ranking will definitely help crow a youtube channel without external links.
 

NateStanley

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Personally, I think it's a lot harder nowadays to rely only on the algorithm to promote your channel. It's a gambit that isn't worth taking. The ideal plan in the modern YouTube ecosystem is a combination of promoting externally and then using that initial boost to kick start your video for the YouTube algorithm. For the videos I have now and have had in the past, most of the views I get initially are from 3rd party sites and from there those sources begin to dwindle as my video becomes suggested organically for YouTube users.
 
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itisALLAN

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Personally, I think it's a lot harder nowadays to rely only on the algorithm to promote your channel. It's a gambit that isn't worth taking. The ideal plan in the modern YouTube ecosystem is a combination of promoting externally and then using that initial boost to kick start your video for the YouTube algorithm. For the videos I have now and have had in the past, most of the views I get initially are from 3rd party sites and from there those sources begin to dwindle as my video becomes suggested organically for YouTube users.
I'm curious, what 3rd party site are you referring to?
 
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TYTD

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I think a lot of people put a lot of faith in external sites to help boost there subs/views. Honestly for the last 2 years I've been pounding away on message boards, twitter, Instagram, Facebook to try and pull people to my youtube channel. and I STILL get more traffic from my own personal website than from any of those engagement platforms. though even thats less than what I organically grow from my youtube channel. I average a couple of subs a week (Though recently over the last 3-4 weeks my channels been totally dead for some unexplainable reason both in terms of subs and views)

I think it's definitely possible to grow a channel without external sites. because thats what appears to be happening with me despite me using them xD
 

Lightsen

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In the past, external sites were the best thing to boost your traffic. now in 2020 I say absolutely not.
just consider that watchtime is the number 1 factor, not views, and it all makes sense.
(this does depend on your type of channel though, as things like how to's are more likely to just be a one view then leave type of channel, so other sites are vital help)

Because YouTube focuses on watchtime, they will be looking less at the amount of views, and more at how long each of those viewers watched for, also if they stay on youtube or immediately leave.
if you get 50k views from facebook, it's likely that most of them will not watch for long at all. leaving you terrible horrible watchtime and retention statistics, which tells the algorithm that this is a bad video.

if your gonna go external, you have to HAVE TO find people that will watch your vid all the way through, not just random internet people. try finding the niche, and start small, like friends/fandoms etc that you know will enjoy your content. once youtube picks up on it the organic growth is easy.