I don't understand where this idea of sharing your stuff outside of yt comes from. Has this been tested? Wouldn't YT value higher stuff that goes viral within the platform itself vs stuff that got posted elsewhere?
Also, i have some videos with great retention, but if you don't win the CTR lottery during the first days, the video basically dies and gets stuck (no recommended = no views).
Even if the CTR went higher over time as I drove traffic to it from endscreens, and the retention was above average compared to my other videos, and it was a solid 15 minute video, same thing, it never took off, even with a similar CTR of other videos that did took off and had worse retention, all variations of the same niche. So my conclusion is that the first days are key and the CTR that matters is the one obtained from the impressions that YT itself gives to you, not the ones you can achieve from using other videos you have via endscreens, or being shared on facebook, or perhaps it counts but at a lower tier than actual YT recommending it on the recommendation feed.
To me it's a bit of a crapshot. I work my a** on an animation for a month, release a video and doesn't get recommended, wereas other dudes in my niche are doing half assed stuff that is getting tons of views.
Also, it's impossible to upload frequently if you upload quality 10+ minute animations. It takes a month to finish one. So basically, there's an incentive to do half assed content, unless YT makes every single video you upload a viral success that gets recommended so you can live off this passive income stream while you work on another highly edited video. This is why most people end up doing gameplays or vlogs or other stuff where you can upload more frequently and thus play the CTR lottery more frequently. There's basically no incentive to "work hard" in the sense of working a lot on a single video. Unless you call releasing a ton of half assed content hard work. For instance, Alan Becker does super complex stickman animations that takes age to create, every single video he uploads is a viral success. Meanwhile other similar channels work as hard and can't make a living out of it because the algorithm doesn't promote them, there's no point in working for 1 or 2 months in a video if it doesn't get recommended. So he can afford spending months without uploading because he recieves infinite passive income from previous uploads wereas others are stuck, so the incentive to work hard is lost. And even if you "made it" and managed to grow a "big" channel like myself, it's still a crapshot, having a lot of subs doesn't mean getting your video recommended. There's clearly different tiers of channels rated internally, some channels seem to be loved by the algorithm and every damn video is a 1+million view success, then others seems like it's a lottery everytime you upload. And then there's others that are stuck in a limbo and haven't been able to get a video that takes off for years and eventually leave because it's too frustrating. They have tons of subs but their videos no longer take off. And after p-score being revealed the feel of constant paranoia of your channel being shadowflagged for some reason is too strong and you become anxious, imagine the feel of working hard while not knowing if your channel has been tagged to secretly throttle your videos.
