I'd like to offer thoughtful reviews of your channels

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You seem absolutely swamped, and I am not at all surprised seeing as what you're doing is awesome. Your channel is also great, you can really tell you love what you're doing and you love the subject matter. I kind of went on a binge with your videos haha.

I don't think you'd like the videos on my main channel, but I just passed 50 subscribers on my secondary acoustic cover channel and I'd love your feedback to help me on my way to the next 50 (whenever you get the chance).

Thanks for being so awesome!

 
If you have the time, I would appreciate a review. My channel is in its infancy and I am trying to grow and learn to better myself and my videos. Thank you
 
Kaleido said:
I've been going through this thread and I'm impressed at the depth you go into reviewing, and that you're still maintaining this thread months later. When I first saw it go up I thought you'd either give really contrived feedback or wouldn't be able to keep up with the demand at all. I don't know how you find the time, but if you find an extra couple of minutes, I'd love to throw my hat in the ring haha
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Hi Kaleido,

You’ve been exceptionally patient with me and I’m grateful. Things have settled down enough for me to start catching up on channel reviews and I got to yours today. I enjoyed learning a little about cars and getting to know you a bit as well. Here are my thoughts:

When I went to your channel, the first thing I saw was the banner. I really dig the picture, but it wasn’t enough for me to get a sense of what this channel would be about. The thumbnails and titles gave me a better read, but I think it would benefit you to unify the look and feel of your channel especially in terms of the initial impression stuff. The Internet is a fickle place, and people aren’t going to take the time to dig through your material to figure out who or what you are. You’ve got to spell that out from the get-go. In addition to doing this more clearly with the channel art and the “About” section, I think you’d be wise to do the same with your intros on your videos. You usually say who you are and what you’re about to do (which is really good), but some kind of tag line that reminds viewers of the big picture point of the channel would be a useful addition.

After a couple of videos I felt like I was picking up on what you’re going for with the channel, and I like the concept. Explanation videos are often a hit on YouTube and adding a dash of personality and a hint of story telling should only make the videos better yet, right? On paper, yes, but the execution isn’t quite jelling just yet. I dig the idea, the personalities involved, the settings, and instruction, but the balance between those seems a tick off to me and I think that might be why your channel hasn’t grown at a rate that’s commensurate with the amount of work you’ve clearly put in.

Well, no one likes the guy who nit picks and then wanders off, so I’m going to offer some constructive suggestions.

1. Decide what the central point of your channel is. Do you want to show people how to fix specific problems with specific makes and models? Do you want to do a vlog that invites viewers into your projects? Do you want to move toward automotive related humor? Are you doing road trip documentaries? Junk Yard scavenging fun? Any of those things would be fine, but one needs to be decidedly in the driver’s seat.

2. Whichever you choose, I think you need to edit much tighter. Your short stuff is the best of what you’ve got so far, because you’re getting to the point quickly and providing resolution quickly. The longer stuff doesn’t seem to offer more value per se, but just takes longer to get the same amount across. Be ruthless. Once you’ve decided what the central thrust of your video/s is, ditch everything that doesn’t advance the point of greatly endear yourself to your audience.


A mistake that I see just about everyone including me make when they’re still a smaller channel is this: We imitate bigger channels and TV shows that already have a following when we make editorial decisions having to do with us goofing around. The reality is this. Small channels don’t have relational capital with their audience yet, and viewers who are still sizing us up don’t often find great value in seeing us mug and ham it up. There are some hosts who are off-the-charts dynamic and have such huge energy that they might get away with it a bit more, but us normal people have to earn the right to leave lots of our casual/candid stuff in our videos. Value is the key. Your strong suit is knowing stuff about cars and talking about it in interesting and informative ways. You seem cool, but a strictly personality-driven blog doesn’t seem to be what you’re going for. Staying relaxed, fun, engaging, but on-task and tight will help retain viewers and will gradually earn you the ability to bring your audience along with you into longer asides.

3. Which reminds me: Value! Every video must offer value or relatively no one will watch them. Always ask yourself the hard question, “If I didn’t know and like me, and I came across this video, would there be any reason for me to watch it?” If the answer is no, your video probably sucks.

I’ve reviewed some channels that just don’t have much to offer even though the people behind them seem pretty cool. You have an advantage here, because you do have something to offer, and it just happens to be something that people sometimes need to know but are usually intimidated by. You have another advantage over many others in that you’re a good communicator. That means, you have the ability to understandably explain car things to people who might not otherwise get it.

You’re at your absolute best when you’re doing this. You’re in your groove, you come off well, and you offer genuine value to your audience.

I have an older Jeep, and I have a brake job coming up. You’d better believe I’ve noted your videos and that I’ll be back to have you walk me through my project. That’s value.

I weirdly enjoyed the flash flood warning video, and parts of the road trip videos (I didn’t watch it all) but it was just too much of the same stuff. Apart from people who know you and really like you, these kind of things won’t attract or retain viewers because it’s just not interesting to watch a stranger document a trip from the inside of a car.

Clearly these were early efforts and that’s okay. It’s a fun way to show friends what you’ve been up to and to share some flashbacks with future subscribers, but you've come a long way when comparing those to your restoring the mercedes vlog. Long-term, it's higher value content like that which will set you up to succeed.


I hope you’re still with me, because that might have felt like an avalanche of criticism. I offer it in a spirit of encouragement. But there are also things I like about the channel that I haven’t highlighted yet. So let’s talk about that.

1. When you’re working on cars, you film in such a way that I can see what’s going on. I can’t duplicate what you’re doing if I can’t see what you’re talking about, and you always seem to go out of your way to give us a good look.

2. You don’t do the same exact thing every time. The variety is good in that it gives viewers a reason to click on more than one video because your channel doesn’t look at first glance like a if-I’ve-seen-one-I’ve-seen-‘em-all type. I still think the channel needs to be more targeted to really get traction, but I hope that if you take my advice on that, you’ll still keep up the creative variety of settings and activities while targeting a singular theme more closely.

3. You turn some good phrases and communicate well. This will be even more impressive if you’re willing to be more ruthless in cutting the down time and unneeded banter. You’re clearly smart and it’s fun to listen to that smartness even when I don’t totally grasp the subject matter.

4. You’re committed. You’ve got 73 subs after a year and you’re still going strong and soliciting advice on how to get better yet. People who stick with things get better and earn trust. You’re in the process of doing that and subscribers and visitors will note that.

5. The fun comes through. Keep capitalizing on this. Cut the sort-of-fun stuff and retain the very fun stuff so that your videos feel tight, crisp, and fun from beginning to end. You like what you do and when that comes through right along side informative content; you’re hitting your stride.

On the whole I think you have the foundation of something good here. I don’t think you’ve played to your strengths enough in your first year, but I do think that if you seriously play to your strengths in year two, you’ll see much better growth. You’re at your best when talking about content you know well and sharing it with your viewers. You struggle the most when the videos lag out and viewers find themselves waiting around for things to get rolling again. You’ve got good stuff and a lot of value to offer potential subscribers. I’m eager to see how you play it moving forward. I wish you only the best in this and everything else you’re up to.

Take care,

Matt
 
JordanBlower said:
If I could ever get constructive criticism as precise as yours, I'd be happy!
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Thanks for the kind words! I'm making a real effort to catch up on the list, so hopefully people won't have to wait weeks on weeks anymore. Do you want me to review your channel when I'm caught up?
 
TMBH said:
Thanks for the kind words! I'm making a real effort to catch up on the list, so hopefully people won't have to wait weeks on weeks anymore. Do you want me to review your channel when I'm caught up?
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It's a one of a kind offer because you put so much heart into it, so I very much would like to! There's no rush because it'll make my day whatever day it falls on!
 
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I've been reading through your reviews and the amount of detail you provide is amazing. How you find the time to do this is beyond me but when you do get around to this part of the stack it would be nice to see as detailed a report about my own channel. Give me an idea of where I can improve.

Also don't worry about how long it takes you to do these reviews the detail is amazing and in the end you are rendering a rather valuable service for free. So take your time and don't let it become a chore. Thanks for doing this, regardless of weather you get to mine or not, your providing a really good way for members of the community to improve and that's an awesome thing to do.
 
Agis said:
Hello,

would you mind of taking a look at my channel?
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I'm doing(from my pov) good quality videos, and i was asking myself, what's the missing part there.
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Hi Agiss,

Yours is the first gaming channel I’ve reviewed since coming back from my long summer vacation, and I noticed several things about it that I like. As I’ve mentioned on several occasions in my reviews, I tend to find gaming channels boring – not so much because I have an axe to grind – but because it’s so easy to start a gaming channel that lots of people try it and most aren’t committed to delivering quality content that provides actual value to potential viewers. I sense that you’re trying to do better, and I think you’ve got some aspects of your channel working. That said, you’ve been uploading faithfully and with variety for the better part of a year and you’re struggling to build a subscriber base. My goal in this review is to process through why that might be and what changes might help you get some hard-earned traction after a year of putting in some serious effort. Let’s get started.

The first video I encountered when I loaded up your page was a review of World of Warships. The very first thing I noticed was your accent. Right off the bat I have to say I was HIGHLY impressed with your English which I assume (forgive me if I’m wrong and being an insensitive jerk) is not your first language. It’s perfect, it’s clear, you enunciate very well, and it makes your voice work more interesting than most. Your mic setup doesn’t look dazzling, but you’ve got it dialed and you’re getting acceptable quality out of it. You make a good first impression with your voice.

On the other hand, your opening line is “What’s up guys…” Maybe I’m being silly for feeling grumpy about this because I glance at a lot of channels and I hear it so often (I review YouTube channels in other venues as well), or maybe I’m right and it sucks. The truth is probably somewhere in between. What I know for sure is that you’ve got something better and more inspired that can set the hook right off the bat. When I hear “What’s up guys…” it says to me that the channel is going to be derivative, imitative, uninspired. I know that might seem like a lot to distill from three little words, but it usually proves true. The best channels I view never start like that. They always grab my attention with humor, wit, a great question, or an engaging personality being unique. The reason this matters and that I’m spending a whole giant paragraph on it is that we’re talking about the Internet here, and not just the Internet, but YouTube, and if you don’t set the hook quickly you aren’t going to retain viewers, and if you don’t retain viewers you’ll never grow. I promise you that people are making decisions about you and your channel from the moment you start to speak. Is that fair? Nope. Is that true? Absolutely.

You have the ability to set the hook and to open your material in ways that are much, much stronger – ways that make it very hard for anyone to click away from your work.

Rant over.

After I got past the opening phrase, I saw that you were playing a game that I’d never hear of, but that looked cool to me. I also noticed that you were already playing the game which was a plus for me. I wanted to see if you could blow that guy up and I hung around for much longer than I usually would to see who was going to get sunk. After a few minutes it occurred to me that I was rooting for you even though I don’t know you simply because the game was happening from your/our point of view. Why would I root for the other guy when it seems like I’m on the same boat as you? Right after that it occurred further to me that I might have just stumbled onto an important reality about gaming channels in general. An advantage you have, that gaming channel hosts don’t seize on nearly enough, is that whatever you’re playing is happening from your perspective and therefore our perspective. We encounter the action and the story through the character or vehicle you’re controlling, and we’re all preconditioned to root for whomever we encounter the story through. You and all gaming channel hosts should seize on this. Too many make the mistake of causing viewers to imagine what it would be like to be on the receiving end instead of causing viewers to feel like we’re all in this together. Make viewers feel like they’re invested and part of the team and I think they’ll stick around longer and maybe even subconsciously savor success vicariously through you. If you achieve that you’re building a connection that just showing off fails to realize.

I think you have an intuitive knack for this, but obviously there’s a lot of room to grow.

As the video went on you offered some observations here and there, but your commentary sounded like I sound when I’m playing a game that requires a lot of focus and trying to talk on the phone. The game held my attention, but you didn’t. It wasn’t because you didn’t have some good points, it was because you sounded distracted and distant and because you didn’t sound excited to connect with your audience.

Please understand that nearly everyone in your genre makes this mistake. I have a very simple solution: Outwork your competition by scripting your review and then editing your audio together with game footage after the fact. This takes a ton more work and forethought, but your audience will notice it right off the bat. They’ll be more likely to reward your work by giving you their attention. If you do what most gamers do (which is play a game while mumbling about some stuff for a while and then when you feel done just post it and hope there’s something good in there somewhere) people will repay you with a proportionate amount of attention (next to none). Whether it’s conscious or not, humans don’t give focus to things that seem haphazard and thrown together even if it’s subject matter they like. Humans do however reward effort with effort. Earn their attention. Earn their subscriptions.

You’re clearly very sharp and understand your subject matter. If you gave a crisp, energetic review of World of Warships with a fun voiceover while letting the visuals show us some of what you were describing all while walking us through a naval battle, and if you did it all in 3-4 minutes, you’d have a real winner on your hands. You definitely have the skill set to consistently pull something like that off.

I say this all the time, but here goes again: If you do what I just described, you’d be offering your viewers value. You’d be giving them a reason to watch. You’d be earning their attention. If you don’t offer clear value your channel will only grow by begging or by freak, one-in-several-million won-the-lottery luck (and if that happens you’ll still need value to keep that freak viral audience around for the long haul).

I like your channel art because it gave me a clear impression of what to expect from your channel. Great job on that and your thumbnails which have nice variety. That said, I think your choice to lead with the Warship review is a big mistake. It’s not a terrible video, but it doesn’t tell us anything about you. You don’t even physically appear in it. Your channel needs a solid into video right away. Use it to introduce yourself and to endear yourself to viewers. Then use it to tell us and show us what we can expect when we tune in. There’s no reason for a gaming channel intro to take longer than a minute. This will pay huge dividends for them and for you.

Your viewers get to know you and what to expect. That’s respectful of their time and helps them set realistic expectations. It’s good for you because it will keep you on point. It’s always good to announce what you’re going for at the beginning of a project and then to do what you said. It build trust with your viewers and gives you focus. You won’t probably need this when your channel gets bigger, but for now it’s pretty important.

There’s a bunch of stuff that you’re getting right that I hope you keep doing and keep working to improve upon.

- I like that you’re showing us lots of different games. Variety is great and multiple games on your channel helps us to get a sense of who you are and how you come at games in general.

- I like that you generally keep your cool and communicate like a sane person. While I maintain that your videos could use more energy and personality in general, I appreciate that you come off as level-headed. This makes you…

- Likeable! Which is hugely important. You want your viewers to be rooting for you, and you present yourself in a way that makes that easy right now.

- You’re persistent and consistent. This will pay off. Stick with it.

- You explain aspects of games in helpful ways. I don’t think this dominates your videos to the degree it should, but when you’re talking about mechanics and what you like and what you don’t, you do it well.

As I just mentioned, I think you’re at your best when providing information and insight over the top of game footage that makes sense. I think you struggle the most when you get distracted and allow content that probably should have been edited out to artificially bloat other-wise pretty good videos. What you’ve got so far is good and often useful, and has provided you with a ground work for growth that I think you can cash in on by making some changes to your approach. I’m sure you’ve learned a lot this year, and I think that’ll pay off in year two.

I genuinely enjoyed perusing your channel, and I offer my critiques with respect from one person who’s trying to figure it out and get better to another.

I wish you the best.

Matt
 
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