[closed] - low views and subs

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BANJOYOUTUBER

BANJOYOUTUBER

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I release videos once a week, but over the past couple of weeks not even my subscribers are watching them. I'll only get a handful of views. It seems a little worthless the amount of time it takes to put together a video. I know my subscribers like my content because they've told me before, but for whatever reason they're not watching it..

When I joined YouTube and even to this day, in all honesty I don't really care about growth etc, I just want my subscribers to watch my videos considering that's why they've subscribed.

Does anyone have this issue?
 
I have just started so i have not really experienced this first hand but its might have something to do with the youtube algorithm glitch that everyone on youtube is freaking out about.
 
I have been experiencing the opposite, I couldn't upload a video in the last two weeks but I gained a few subscribers.

Just keep uploading quality content over quantity and the subscribers should come.
 
Think of it like this. If you have say 300 channels on your TV. How many do you watch in a night? Better yet, how many do you watch at once? You can only watch one at once.. so there are gonna be some days/weeks where you simply don't watch certain channels, even if you like them.

People subscribe to lots of different people. They don't just watch one channel. So that means, even if someone's subscribed to you, your videos are still only a small % of the other videos in their subscription feed that they have to choose from. So the chances of them picking your videos every time are slim.

What that means in short is that it's rare that all of your subscribers will watch your videos. Expect a percentage of them to watch, but not all of them. So 20-30 views with 100 subscribers is actually a //really// good amount of them watching. That's a sign you're doing a good job!

Also another thing worth taking into account is where those subscribers come from. I took a quick look at your channel and it seems you have a few Day Z videos that got a lot more views than your other videos. So.. chances are, most of your subscribers found you through those videos. That means people came to your channel because of Day Z videos - so some of them will //only// be interested in Day Z and not be interested in videos of other games.

I have the same thing with my channel. A large number of my subscribers found my channel through a lucid dreaming guide I made - and so often those subscribers will watch my lucid dreaming related videos, but only a smaller % of them watch my other videos.
 
You have 106 subs. You can assume 5-15% will probably watch your videos. So if you're getting a minimum of 5-15 views then yours subs are probably watching. Does your analytics say they're not?
 
Honestly, I'm facing the same problem from the last couple of days.I'm not getting that many views from my subscribers, even I didn't do something like sub4sub.I don't know why this happening, I'm really confused about this topic.I have around 157 subs & my views on my last video is 20 even after 1 day of uploading.I'm really confused about this situation :(
 
Thanks for your replies

My concern is not that all my subscribers watch my videos. The issue I'm having is that my view count has drastically reduced over the last few weeks, even though my upload schedule, types of content has not changed. Even my most recent Dayz videos do not have the same response as my older videos.

I've seen many channels that produce many videos and each week they get a measly 20-30 views, I mean if that is the case how are you expected to grow?
 
BANJOYOUTUBER said:
Thanks for your replies

My concern is not that all my subscribers watch my videos. The issue I'm having is that my view count has drastically reduced over the last few weeks, even though my upload schedule, types of content has not changed. Even my most recent Dayz videos do not have the same response as my older videos.

I've seen many channels that produce many videos and each week they get a measly 20-30 views, I mean if that is the case how are you expected to grow?
Click to expand...

Are you talking about the videos where you have 300+ views?

Those views aren't coming from subscribers. Your channel only has ~100 subscribers. Those high view counts were obviously people finding your videos elsewhere, like search etc.

Your new videos aren't getting as many views because they obviously aren't ranking in search so *only* your subscribers can see them, thus smaller numbers. You have some older videos like that too: Battlefield 1 - Prologue for example, and H1Z1 - The Last Stand *New Map*.

Go into Analytics. Type in the name of one of your popular videos in the top, like for example DayZ Standalone - Fails - then when the video comes up, select it. Now on the left side, look for a tab called "Traffic Sources". Click on it, and you'll be able to see where your views from that video came from. I can almost certainly guarantee that you're going to see that they came from search, suggested videos, or browse features (or some combination of all 3). i.e. it wasn't your subscribers watching them in the first place.

If you don't get a video ranked in search etc, then only your subscribers will find it, so of course there'll be a huge view disparity. If you only have 100 subscribers, then only 10-50 of them are likely to watch each video you put out depending on the video. If that same video ranks in search/suggested videos/the home page.. then now way more than 100 people can see that video, so you'll get 100s/1000s of views. This is also how you can attract new viewers to your channel. :)
 
JesusGreen said:
Are you talking about the videos where you have 300+ views?

Those views aren't coming from subscribers. Your channel only has ~100 subscribers. Those high view counts were obviously people finding your videos elsewhere, like search etc.

Your new videos aren't getting as many views because they obviously aren't ranking in search so *only* your subscribers can see them, thus smaller numbers. You have some older videos like that too: Battlefield 1 - Prologue for example, and H1Z1 - The Last Stand *New Map*.

Go into Analytics. Type in the name of one of your popular videos in the top, like for example DayZ Standalone - Fails - then when the video comes up, select it. Now on the left side, look for a tab called "Traffic Sources". Click on it, and you'll be able to see where your views from that video came from. I can almost certainly guarantee that you're going to see that they came from search, suggested videos, or browse features (or some combination of all 3). i.e. it wasn't your subscribers watching them in the first place.

If you don't get a video ranked in search etc, then only your subscribers will find it, so of course there'll be a huge view disparity. If you only have 100 subscribers, then only 10-50 of them are likely to watch each video you put out depending on the video. If that same video ranks in search/suggested videos/the home page.. then now way more than 100 people can see that video, so you'll get 100s/1000s of views. This is also how you can attract new viewers to your channel. :)
Click to expand...

Ok what you said makes perfect sense. So my next question would be how do you get your video on suggested videos or browse features.

When my dayz fails video did so well I made a dayz fails #2, used all the same tags and everything. Only received 100 views more than half were my subscribers..

It doesn't really make any sense.
 
BANJOYOUTUBER said:
Ok what you said makes perfect sense. So my next question would be how do you get your video on suggested videos or browse features.

When my dayz fails video did so well I made a dayz fails #2, used all the same tags and everything. Only received 100 views more than half were my subscribers..

It doesn't really make any sense.
Click to expand...

Okay so when you first make a video, YouTube will use your metadata (title/tags/description/closed captioning) to give it some free ranking for a few days. During that time, YouTube "tests" out your video. It looks at all the clicks you get from search etc, and sees how well those clicks fared. Did people click and then leave after 2 seconds? Or did people stay and watch most/all of the video.

If people watched a decent amount of your video that suggests they enjoyed it - so, your video stays ranked in search after the initial free ranking period is over.
If they watched an okay amount but not super great, then it'll stay ranked but it'll drop down to a lower ranking than it was initially given.
If on the other hand most people watched most of the video, then the ranking will even increase if more people seem to like your video than other related videos.

If you search for "dayz standalone fails", your first video is the 4th video to pop up on the first page. Your second video shows up in search too.. but all the way back on page 4, where barely anyone is likely to see it.

I can think of two potential reasons why this may have happened:

Possible reason 1: It simply got lower audience retention times. If overall people watched less of the video, then YouTube sees that as evidence that it was less engaging, and so it ranks poorly.

Possible reason 2: Since the title is the main thing that determines your ranking on the first day before YouTube has any data to improve your rankings, because of the #2 in the title it might not have shown up on page 1 right away. It might have been on page 4 to begin with. If then your audience retention times didn't meet a certain threshold, it kept its ranking but didn't improve.

I believe the way search ranking works is your audience retention is most important, but after that views are also important. A video with 100,000 views but only 5% audience retention will rank really low, while a video with 1000 views and 90% audience retention will rank really high.. but if 2 videos both have say ~50% audience retention, and one of them has 20,000 views while the other has 10,000 views, the one with more views will rank higher.

This means it's slightly harder for you to get a good ranking if you don't get enough views during the first few days. So if your video starts out on page 4, it might never really rank unless you get enough views from elsewhere.

My personal rule of thumb when making videos that I want to be searchable is I try to make them so they rank in page 1 for at least some search term. Even if it's not the main one I want to rank for.. I want to be getting in enough views those first few days so that I keep/improve my rankings.

You can find out which of those reasons caused it btw by looking in analytics, and typing in the video name for one of the videos, then going into the "Audience Retention" tab. Make a note of the "Average percentage viewed" part for that video. Now type in the same of the other video and do the same thing. If the % is quite a bit higher for video 1, then that's your rankings explained right there.

In general longer videos even if they're just as good will have slightly lower % retention times, simply because people sometimes get bored and click off earlier etc.

Also as for ranking in suggested videos/browse features. I believe if your video has been doing relatively well and getting enough views with good audience retention, then YouTube will automatically "test out" your video on their home page or in suggested videos. Again this is just a few days, where they gather information about whether it did well. If it seemed to do well, your video will stay recommended to people there. If not, it'll go back to not being recommended.
 
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