So...FRIGGEN...FRUSTRATING!

[The NotARubicon!]

We put a lot of time and effort into our videos.. 3 people on the team, up to 8 cameras, 3-5 days of editing - all for a final product that WE think is pretty darn good..
Then, I go do a few searches for similar videos in our niche and I find a bunch of poorly lit, bad sounding, shakey piece of boring-junk videos that get 2,000,000+ views and channels full of similarly krappy videos with 10's or hundreds of thousands of subscribers - all while we can't even break 2k subscribers or a few thousand views per video..
Maybe people's standards for youtube are much lower and quality isnt in demand?

 

[Aryssa]

yeah now imagine giving up after putting all that hard work in your videos? don't be upset, what easy comes easy goes so your youtube success will be much more powerful than somebody who blew up thanks to a random low quality video

 

[The NotARubicon!]

Yah, we can't give up now.. We're in too deep! A friend just txt'd me that he thinks our latest video is our best one yet and he says that critical acclaim is much better than popularity :-|. ..

 

[Aryssa]

Yah, we can't give up now.. We're in too deep! A friend just txt'd me that he thinks our latest video is our best one yet and he says that critical acclaim is much better than popularity :-|. ..

yeah I took a look at your channel and your videos truly have hard work and dedication behind them, it's not something you always see in youtube. i gotta say though that nowadays youtube has more children than adults and your content is aimed at people who are grown up atleast a little so you have to realise that it's harder to target grown ups than kids, adults have jobs, families etc while kids just have school a little bit of homework and then they chill after that. that's why it's easier (or atleast imo) for a gaming or makeup youtube channel to blow up because they're aimed at little boys or girls
maybe that's the reason? not quite sure but like I said keep it going, don't give up and I'm sure you will become big in youtube. plus you will appreciate your success more and it will make it harder for you to give up (unlike channels that went viral overnight)

 

[Tari]

Never give up. Everyone needs to start somewhere.

 

[TheDutchTexan]

Once you have 100K subscribers people follow you because they are sheep and want to be part of a big club. My sub gain has been stagnant for a couple of days now. Views are down as well. I think I might be nearing the end of this hobby thing. I don't seem to enjoy it as much anymore.

 

[TheSwedishTraveler]

Take credit that you at least have better quality videos, and more people are going to like yours better! Een though it´s frustrating that people with less quality videos have more videos!
I know my videos are s**t and don´t expect them to go viral. Hopefully your videos will go more viral!

 

[Minikinart]

Just keep doing what you're doing for as long as you find enjoyment in it. Eventually the views as well as subscribers will come, at least that's what I believe/think I don't have much experience with it. Everyone grows at a different rate so don't compare yourself to others and don't get discouraged. That was one of the first things I was taught when I was doing my research before I started my channel and I believe it's one of the most important things I know. If I constantly compared myself to others I would of probably quit months ago.

 

[Gaijillionaire]

I'm the same as you. I try to make my videos look broadcast quality as much as I can. I hate it when a shaky iPhone camera or someone just playing a game babbling aimlessly gets zillions of views. The other one is when people copy paste Wikipedia and act like they've made some great discovery

But stick with it because you'll eventually find the others who hate that too and get a following from that

 

[KatyAdelson]

I'd focus on the things you CAN control, like SEO, image quality, editing, description, title, thumbnail, monitoring audience retention graphs... Just focus on optimizing those things. Don't focus on how videos of lesser quality seem to be "doing better." It could be that they did great 5 years ago and have since slowed down. It takes time for YouTube to work out what videos are good, and it also takes effort on the creator side to learn how to feed YouTube the right info. Once the search engine starts ranking your videos, if they truly are better, they will most likely surpass the other ones... YouTube seems to have a preference to ranking "newer" videos that are showing a positive response, so we all do have a chance.

As far as people's expectations -- most aren't expecting to watch content at a quality of a Hollywood blockbuster, but I'd think they'd stick around if they found a channel doing it anyway!