- Joined
- Sep 18, 2017
- Messages
- 160
- Reaction score
- 75
- Age
- 31
- Website
- www.youtube.com
- Channel Type
- Youtuber
Been kicking around this form for quite a long time now so though it might be a good time to pull up a chair and dive deep into my last 2.5 years of Analytics to see what we can all learn about what I did right & all the many things I did wrong!
As a brief overview of statistics
- Started In Sept 2017 (2.5 years ago)
- Currently 7.1k Subs
- 2.2m Channel Views
- Averaging 1.5 to 3k views per video (approx)
So the above image shows my views since Sept '17 and i've broken it down into the main segments and want to talk through what caused each one. But one of the main takeaway points I wanted to emphasise is that is is not one upwards trajectory, its been a whole series of up and down, good and bad that has lead to where I am today, don't expect to start well and continue to grow all the way, downturns are to be expected!
1) As above I first kicked off my channel back in Sept 2017 and I wasn't 100% sure what I wanted to do I was torn between either a car based channel (hence the evo part of my name) or a gaming channel, in the end I started doing a car based game 'Car mechanic simulator 2018' not unsurprisingly views were very low with views only in the 10's per video. I had ready about the idea of being very niche so focused more down into mods for the game including playing specific real world cars, this enabled me to then also target the Reddit for those interested in said cars and I managed to get views up into the 100 to 150 a day, I was also experimenting with a few more history based game and city builders as well as an early closed beta of a game called Total War Arena. I feel my main problem here was community building, I was dragging external views from sites such as Reddit but they had no real interest in either the game or me, so whilst it gave a short term view increase it didn't generate any long terms subs or community.
2) Feb 2018 - The game Total War Arena moves from closed beta to open beta and sees a good surge in search traffic, as I was one of only a few channel to cover the closed beta I end up getting a pick up in views as such I find myself increasingly focusing in on Total war Arena (TWA) and increasingly making videos about the game, daily views increase to around 1k per day and subscriber numbers under go a big increase! Unfortunately after the initial increase views end up pretty steady (I think in part down the the very limited success of the game) However, subs continue as well as views and reached 1k subs applied & got monetisation approval on 31st July 2018 (Income was obviously very very small but after 10 months It did feel like a cool achievement). I did try a few other games during this time which got some views but all generally less than TWA so I became a little stuck with the game.
Nov 2018 - Due to the lack of interest from the playerbase and not enough new players TWA announces it plans to close. Quite a bombshell for me didn't really know what to do. I had really built a lot of my channel around the game and had really gotten into a routine of how I made my videos. However, despite my initial upset it was a GOOD change in the long run as I had seen no growth in view in 6 months and needed to move onto a new game.
3) Nov 18 to June 19 - What to do!?! after the collapse of TWA I really didn't know what to do videos on so I flew threw a range of different historical strategy type games, I managed to maintain a chunk of my TWA audience and was still getting a few hundred views per video but it was a good step down from the TWA days. (Was extremely tempted to give at this point, I had been going for over a year now and it felt like the channel was just in decline) Luckily I managed to have a few random game videos do ok and get some decent views (which are the random spikes in the graph) but this didn't really translate well into long term community. Towards the end of this period I started playing the closed beta for a game called Conqueror's Blade and producing a number of videos for it, initially it generated little traffic.
4) June 2019 - Conqueror's Blade moves from Closed beta to Open Beta (similar response to what happened with TWA but on a larger scale) the game brought in thousands of new players and I was one of the only channels that had tutorial content on the game, views skyrocketed up to around 20k, subs were coming in around 100 per day and even the ad revenue was quite decent, this was the first time I got a real sense of the potential of YouTube if I could maintain a channel at this level then I can really see how it can be worth it as well as enormous fun. Unfortunately the initial buzz for the game soon began to die down.
5) July 19 to Jan 20 - Whilst the buzz around Conqueror's blade did die down a lot it settled down to what I considered still a pretty reasonable level and I was getting daily views in around 3 to 4k level and news videos were hitting over 1k views, so I was still pretty pleased. I explored some other games at the time but nothing really stuck and my core game remained Conqueror's Blade throughout this. Interestingly, around this time was the first time I started to get active emails from other small games compies with steam keys, help from developers when asked for and access into other games closed beta etc. (seems like 3 to 4k subs & 1K average videos views was the tipping point for companies to take interest)
6) Feb 2020 Conqueror's Blade started to get increasing player numbers. At the same time I started to work with the conqueror's blade devs on producing some YouTube adverts which helped increase visibility of my channel. Furthermore, I started venbturing into some other interesting games + covering aspects of gaming news for games that I felt would appeal to my existing audience and for the first time I am finding they are also getting some decent views which is very encouraging. Now most videos are hitting 2 to 3K plus views in the first 24hrs and i've had over 1k new subs in the past month. How much of this is down to lockdown waits to be seen but i'm hopeful to be able to maintain the viewership going forwards.
Concluding Remarks
If you have read this far down then good job
I didn't particularly want to write this as a guide to growing a channel because as clear demonstrated above I have been learning and exploring and making mistakes as much as anyone but I thought my last 2.5 years does do a good job of showing youtube isn't all plain sailing, sometimes things go well and other times they don't in November 18 I never thought i'd be able to recover my channel and wanted to give up but i'm so glad I didn't. Equally change is often a good thing, if after 6 months a particular game or niche isn't work try something different, adjust, adapt and try to succeed from a different angle :-D
As a brief overview of statistics
- Started In Sept 2017 (2.5 years ago)
- Currently 7.1k Subs
- 2.2m Channel Views
- Averaging 1.5 to 3k views per video (approx)
So the above image shows my views since Sept '17 and i've broken it down into the main segments and want to talk through what caused each one. But one of the main takeaway points I wanted to emphasise is that is is not one upwards trajectory, its been a whole series of up and down, good and bad that has lead to where I am today, don't expect to start well and continue to grow all the way, downturns are to be expected!
1) As above I first kicked off my channel back in Sept 2017 and I wasn't 100% sure what I wanted to do I was torn between either a car based channel (hence the evo part of my name) or a gaming channel, in the end I started doing a car based game 'Car mechanic simulator 2018' not unsurprisingly views were very low with views only in the 10's per video. I had ready about the idea of being very niche so focused more down into mods for the game including playing specific real world cars, this enabled me to then also target the Reddit for those interested in said cars and I managed to get views up into the 100 to 150 a day, I was also experimenting with a few more history based game and city builders as well as an early closed beta of a game called Total War Arena. I feel my main problem here was community building, I was dragging external views from sites such as Reddit but they had no real interest in either the game or me, so whilst it gave a short term view increase it didn't generate any long terms subs or community.
2) Feb 2018 - The game Total War Arena moves from closed beta to open beta and sees a good surge in search traffic, as I was one of only a few channel to cover the closed beta I end up getting a pick up in views as such I find myself increasingly focusing in on Total war Arena (TWA) and increasingly making videos about the game, daily views increase to around 1k per day and subscriber numbers under go a big increase! Unfortunately after the initial increase views end up pretty steady (I think in part down the the very limited success of the game) However, subs continue as well as views and reached 1k subs applied & got monetisation approval on 31st July 2018 (Income was obviously very very small but after 10 months It did feel like a cool achievement). I did try a few other games during this time which got some views but all generally less than TWA so I became a little stuck with the game.
Nov 2018 - Due to the lack of interest from the playerbase and not enough new players TWA announces it plans to close. Quite a bombshell for me didn't really know what to do. I had really built a lot of my channel around the game and had really gotten into a routine of how I made my videos. However, despite my initial upset it was a GOOD change in the long run as I had seen no growth in view in 6 months and needed to move onto a new game.
3) Nov 18 to June 19 - What to do!?! after the collapse of TWA I really didn't know what to do videos on so I flew threw a range of different historical strategy type games, I managed to maintain a chunk of my TWA audience and was still getting a few hundred views per video but it was a good step down from the TWA days. (Was extremely tempted to give at this point, I had been going for over a year now and it felt like the channel was just in decline) Luckily I managed to have a few random game videos do ok and get some decent views (which are the random spikes in the graph) but this didn't really translate well into long term community. Towards the end of this period I started playing the closed beta for a game called Conqueror's Blade and producing a number of videos for it, initially it generated little traffic.
4) June 2019 - Conqueror's Blade moves from Closed beta to Open Beta (similar response to what happened with TWA but on a larger scale) the game brought in thousands of new players and I was one of the only channels that had tutorial content on the game, views skyrocketed up to around 20k, subs were coming in around 100 per day and even the ad revenue was quite decent, this was the first time I got a real sense of the potential of YouTube if I could maintain a channel at this level then I can really see how it can be worth it as well as enormous fun. Unfortunately the initial buzz for the game soon began to die down.
5) July 19 to Jan 20 - Whilst the buzz around Conqueror's blade did die down a lot it settled down to what I considered still a pretty reasonable level and I was getting daily views in around 3 to 4k level and news videos were hitting over 1k views, so I was still pretty pleased. I explored some other games at the time but nothing really stuck and my core game remained Conqueror's Blade throughout this. Interestingly, around this time was the first time I started to get active emails from other small games compies with steam keys, help from developers when asked for and access into other games closed beta etc. (seems like 3 to 4k subs & 1K average videos views was the tipping point for companies to take interest)
6) Feb 2020 Conqueror's Blade started to get increasing player numbers. At the same time I started to work with the conqueror's blade devs on producing some YouTube adverts which helped increase visibility of my channel. Furthermore, I started venbturing into some other interesting games + covering aspects of gaming news for games that I felt would appeal to my existing audience and for the first time I am finding they are also getting some decent views which is very encouraging. Now most videos are hitting 2 to 3K plus views in the first 24hrs and i've had over 1k new subs in the past month. How much of this is down to lockdown waits to be seen but i'm hopeful to be able to maintain the viewership going forwards.
Concluding Remarks
If you have read this far down then good job
I didn't particularly want to write this as a guide to growing a channel because as clear demonstrated above I have been learning and exploring and making mistakes as much as anyone but I thought my last 2.5 years does do a good job of showing youtube isn't all plain sailing, sometimes things go well and other times they don't in November 18 I never thought i'd be able to recover my channel and wanted to give up but i'm so glad I didn't. Equally change is often a good thing, if after 6 months a particular game or niche isn't work try something different, adjust, adapt and try to succeed from a different angle :-D
