Loki Doki
Gaming Nerd and SEO Guru
Much of how and why you gain subscribers is a mystery, but there are trends and spikes and falls that you can work out why they happened. i will use my graph as an example
This is for my 8 month old gaming channel. i started off playing Football Manager but have since diversified into other games and some random videos (all planned)
A. as you can see on the image, after a few months i got some unusual spikes in growth. what could that be? well this one is easy. i was approached by a larger Football manager youtube channel to make a weekly video for them, which i did for a couple of months. each week i would make a video. and in that video i would suggest the viewers checked out my channel. the average daily at this time went up to 7/8 subs a day
Once the videos for that other channel stopped i continue to get around 7/8 subs a day. mostly natural growth but with an extra sub on average from the previous videos i made for the other channel
As i got into April my average started growing. no weird spikes. so this is just natural growth from my channel being better known. turning up as suggested videos, doing better in the search rankings and my own improvement in making videos
B. Oh Shi* what the **** happened there? my first ever days with negative subs. well this was all planned and i was well prepared for it. you see. all this time i have been making football manager videos. i had mentioned numerous times in my videos that i won't always just do football manager to help soften the blow when others games did appear.
The big day came in may, with the release of Warhammer total war. i game i always planned to make a ton of content for. immediately my subs dropped, people there just for FM where leaving in droves. this is the point where i have seen and spoken to many youtubers who reverse their decision and go back to making just Football manager videos.
I had always promised to continue making football manager videos (its my favourite game after all) so even with the release of all this new stuff. i still continued with my daily football manager videos. i presumed those unsubscribing were effectively dead subscribers. what i mean by that is people who weren't that bothered about my channel and seeing other content was the final straw for them to unsub.
This proved to be true. with the views on my Football Manager lets play still getting the same numbers of views and the still gaining subs from those videos. in all, in that 3 week period i lost over 200 subs but gained well over 500. more importantly. i lost 200 mostly pointless dead subs
C. The Hard work Pays off. in the last couple of weeks i have beaten my highest amount of subs in a day 4 times. the last one being 32. pretty good for a little gaming channel. not only am i gaining subs from the Football Manager content. i am gaining lots from the Warhammer Total War content.
the ultimate goal of course is to gain subscribers that will watch your videos regardless of their content because they are interested in you. i have started to test this by making the odd videos that are totally non game related. i made one about a recent dog walk. one about some funny comments i got on a video. and these have been watched. so far these 2 videos have been watched almost as much as my regular stuff. so i know its working.
to sum up this very long post (apologies) while it is harder to work out normal subscriber growth on a daily basis. with a little bit of work you can understand those spikes (up or down) better and therefore have an easier time replicating them. Also. Understand planning a change to your channel. and not panicking, short term loss for long term gain
hope you enjoyed my little essay. (as you may have guessed i love strategy and statistics. my job is to offer strategy advice to small businesses after all) and it is of some use to some of you, and if you want, show me your spikes and explain how they happened. its an important skill to learn
big thanks to all those at YTTalk that most hugely valuable advice that really helped me understand youtube better
let me know if there are other area's you would like me to talk about
cheers
Loki
This is for my 8 month old gaming channel. i started off playing Football Manager but have since diversified into other games and some random videos (all planned)
- as you can see. i saw pretty good growth from the outset (for a gaming channel) why is that?
A. as you can see on the image, after a few months i got some unusual spikes in growth. what could that be? well this one is easy. i was approached by a larger Football manager youtube channel to make a weekly video for them, which i did for a couple of months. each week i would make a video. and in that video i would suggest the viewers checked out my channel. the average daily at this time went up to 7/8 subs a day
Once the videos for that other channel stopped i continue to get around 7/8 subs a day. mostly natural growth but with an extra sub on average from the previous videos i made for the other channel
As i got into April my average started growing. no weird spikes. so this is just natural growth from my channel being better known. turning up as suggested videos, doing better in the search rankings and my own improvement in making videos
B. Oh Shi* what the **** happened there? my first ever days with negative subs. well this was all planned and i was well prepared for it. you see. all this time i have been making football manager videos. i had mentioned numerous times in my videos that i won't always just do football manager to help soften the blow when others games did appear.
The big day came in may, with the release of Warhammer total war. i game i always planned to make a ton of content for. immediately my subs dropped, people there just for FM where leaving in droves. this is the point where i have seen and spoken to many youtubers who reverse their decision and go back to making just Football manager videos.
I had always promised to continue making football manager videos (its my favourite game after all) so even with the release of all this new stuff. i still continued with my daily football manager videos. i presumed those unsubscribing were effectively dead subscribers. what i mean by that is people who weren't that bothered about my channel and seeing other content was the final straw for them to unsub.
This proved to be true. with the views on my Football Manager lets play still getting the same numbers of views and the still gaining subs from those videos. in all, in that 3 week period i lost over 200 subs but gained well over 500. more importantly. i lost 200 mostly pointless dead subs
C. The Hard work Pays off. in the last couple of weeks i have beaten my highest amount of subs in a day 4 times. the last one being 32. pretty good for a little gaming channel. not only am i gaining subs from the Football Manager content. i am gaining lots from the Warhammer Total War content.
the ultimate goal of course is to gain subscribers that will watch your videos regardless of their content because they are interested in you. i have started to test this by making the odd videos that are totally non game related. i made one about a recent dog walk. one about some funny comments i got on a video. and these have been watched. so far these 2 videos have been watched almost as much as my regular stuff. so i know its working.
to sum up this very long post (apologies) while it is harder to work out normal subscriber growth on a daily basis. with a little bit of work you can understand those spikes (up or down) better and therefore have an easier time replicating them. Also. Understand planning a change to your channel. and not panicking, short term loss for long term gain
hope you enjoyed my little essay. (as you may have guessed i love strategy and statistics. my job is to offer strategy advice to small businesses after all) and it is of some use to some of you, and if you want, show me your spikes and explain how they happened. its an important skill to learn
big thanks to all those at YTTalk that most hugely valuable advice that really helped me understand youtube better
let me know if there are other area's you would like me to talk about
cheers
Loki
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