I'd like to offer thoughtful reviews of your channels

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Please could you have a look at mine? I gained my first 100 subs recently, but they've slowed down and I was wondering whether or not I am doing anything wrong and what others would recommend! Please help!
 
Hi just randomly came across this thread and I would love a review, only posted Afew videos but any feedback would be great. Appreciate any advice given
 
MiketheDbacker26 said:
I'd love a review as well! Pretty cool to see you stick to this for so long!

I've been away from YouTube for a while, so if you could review my older videos and tell me what needs improvement, I'd love to try to apply them and make my channel better for when I am ready to make my return!
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Hi Mike,

I appreciate your patience with me as I worked through the channels that had review requests ahead of you. I spent some time perusing your channel over the past day or so, and I have some thoughts.

My first impressions as a visitor to you channel were mostly positive. I like your channel name – it’s friendly, relatable and it tell me exactly what to expect. I like your art – your banner has fun characters I recognize and it has variety which is refreshing because some gamers mistakenly believe that what they’re doing is terribly important and they cover their channel it art that communicates death, darkness, seriousness, death, blood, self-importance, death, and basement dwelling. I love gaming, but that’s not a mindset I’m attracted to, so it’s always more inviting when you get the impression from the get-go that we’re taking ourselves lightly and we’re going to have some simple fun. I like your thumbnails – I don’t see tons of variety in the thumbnail art itself (which may be fine), but I do see TONS of variety in the games. It was so easy and inviting for me to scroll through the videos, because I could ignore the games I know I don’t care about and don’t want to see, and I could efficiently go to games I wanted to watch someone play for a few minutes. The variety is so refreshing.

On the negative side, I next looked at subscriber count and view totals. Both counts are very low, which isn’t terrible in and of itself, but when I noted how long you’d been at it, I subconsciously felt less interested. There’s no fairness to this, but it’s truth: People gravitate toward things that other people have already gravitated toward. No one wants to go to an empty club. No one wants to join an empty church. No one wants to support a candidate that no one else likes. In this life the rich tend to get richer and the poor tend to stay that way no matter how hard well-intentioned social justicers try to artificially manufacture a different reality. It’s tough to get early traction with an idea, project, or movement, but if that momentum happens it can take off in a hurry. Right now, I think the fact that you’ve been at it for a long time, but still have very few views and relatively few subscribers is hurting you. We’ll talk about ideas to remedy that in a minute.

After I glanced over page design, channel art, and numbers, I started spooling up a few videos. In general I liked them. The strengths were your lighthearted, constant commentary with some humor that hit, and the games you chose to review. I enjoyed seeing Zelda II for the first time in ages, and I was curious about Killzone 3 (I now know it’s not for me and for that I thank you). All the videos had a similar tone that usually worked. Volgarr infuriated me, and I enjoyed watching you suck because it made me feel better about myself. Those are all different reasons for me watching a video, and I’m sure other visitors have their own variety of motivations for choosing to watch what they watch.

Now for some suggestions.

I appreciate that you’re trying to edit out the fluff and stick to your strongest stuff. I’d submit to you that you should go even further. Your humor hits a lot more often than most gamer hosts, but, like literally every gaming channel I’ve ever visited, it just doesn’t hit consistently enough. One minute of gold is better than 12 minutes of good enough with one minute of gold mixed in there somewhere. You’re funny and come off well, but you have better material than most of what you’re publishing and I think that explains (in part) why you have relatively small view counts. If you were to reimagine your content model and put out one crisp, joke-a-second, hilarious, well-crafted, filled with forethought, 90 second gem per week I think your channel would take off immediately. You have the talent, voice, sense of humor, and audience awareness to really thrive, but YouTuber viewers are justifiably lazy and demanding. Bored=gone forever. You’re trying to get viewers in the most crowded genre in the history of the Internet and, given your format, if you don’t reward them for every millisecond of their time, they’ll look for someone else who does. Mike, the difference between you and just about everyone else I’ve seen do comedic game commentary is that you have the talent to actually make people want to watch. But in 2015 no one is talented enough to record some banter over the top of a game, edit it down a little, post it and then get lots of views without getting crazy lucky. The key is to combine your natural talent with serious work and planning.

Right now you’re doing kind of a casual catch-all format. Maybe there’s a format that more lends itself your strengths as a funny, likeable commentator. I have some ideas of my own that I may try someday, but I’m sure you can cook up something more targeted that will allow you to flex your muscles more.

In summary, I think you’re good and that you’re getting a lot right. In my opinion, you have great potential for growth, but your current format is holding you back. It’s better than most, but not good enough to thrive without getting lucky (which may happen, but is unlikely). The lots of easy-to-make videos strategy hasn’t really paid off for you even though you have good stuff, but I think that fewer videos each of which are short and jam-packed with awesome and funny will profoundly play to your strengths.

I really enjoyed reviewing your channel. I like your style and I’m very interested to see how you develop your channel moving forward.

Only the best,

Matt
 
**UPDATE**

I'm really enjoying doing these reviews and I plan to keep offering them. As I said from the outset, I'm not any kind of YouTube expert (if I was, my channel would be doing better), but I am a long-time writer and college history teacher and I've graded a lot of papers and projects with care over the years. Doing these reviews has value for me in that I learn from watching what others are doing well and poorly, and in that I get to connect with you, my peers, who are trying to solve the same riddles I am. I hope that these reviews have value for you in that I'm willing to give meaningful feedback and big-picture observations about the direction and ethos of your channels. I does take me some time to generate quality reviews and I appreciate all of your patience with me in that process.

This part of the forums fascinates me, because everyone who comes in here is looking for the same thing: We want someone to take the time to really see what we've been putting so much effort into, to have someone take it seriously, and just to have someone to talk to about our work. I'm trying to scratch that itch.

Some will respond to criticism better than others - receiving critique and praise is learned skill. I've been really impressed with the responses to my reviews and I want to thank those of you who've responded for doing so. I also want to specifically not thank those who haven't.

For the time being, I'm going to keep these coming until the list is exhausted and there are no more requests, or until something major changes in my work load. Long story short, I like your channels and I respect your talents. You're all doing things I can't and it's fun to see you show off your personalities, creativity, and skills. I'm happy to follow up with anyone who's channel I've reviewed. Additionally, I'll usually subscribe to those people who thoughtfully respond to my reviews so that I can remember to check in from time to time to see their progress. Obviously I won't do that for those I don't hear back from; instead, I'll wish them well from a distance and move on.

Thanks for letting me weigh in on your work. I'm impressed and I'm enjoying it.

With appreciation,
Matt
 
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