Intro/outros discussion

Time Jacker said:
Everyone thinks that their intro is awesome and makes their channel look more pro. They think it adds something to their channel. I fell into this trap at the start too. I, along with everyone else who thought that, was wrong.

YouTube is not a TV station and there are different expectations and viewing behaviours. You have precious few seconds to hook a user, so why waste those with flashy graphics at the start?.You need to immediately hook the user. Give them a reason not to move on. Have you ever watched the typical user use YouTube? It's brutal - just "next, next, next" until they find something that captures their attention. You must capture their attention. An intro does not do that. It adds no value. It can serve only as a negative. It's an opportunity for something shinier to catch their eye and then bam - you've lost that viewer. My own stats showed retention loss at exactly the point that the intro kicked in.

If you want subscribers, you need to hook people by getting them stuck in a cycle of your videos before they decide "hey, this channel is pretty enjoyable and consistent, I think I'll subscribe." That's how most subscriptions happen. Even if someone makes it past one of your intros, do you think they're still going to be super impressed with the same intro for the 5th time in 15 minutes? They won't be.

What you can do, is hook the user and then have the intro. Even then, keep it to 3 seconds or less - seriously. But even then, think carefully about what it actually adds to the viewer experience. It might well be worthwhile from a branding perspective, but it might not.
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Exactly. I know a pretty well off YouTuber, and he told me that you want a hook first, then a very short intro. He couldn't stress this enough.
 
Both Intro and outro. but a idea to spice things up a bit could be.
--
Small bit of footage (7sec) to capture the audience.
Intro
Rest of footage
--
 
My intro is like 6 seconds, thats 2-3 seconds of footage of something that looks tasty(food) then I have a thing superimposed over the top and cross fade into the "show" - used to be just green but I think using the cromakey on it works great.

I have an outro too which is longer - I will be putting videos and things on it in the future - just realised this second that it should be quite short too because - as some of them have nothing on it - it will be annoying for the viewer to wait till the end to get video recomendations.
 
I think intros and outros diniftely make your channel look more serious and likable. I am currenly playing around with intros myself but still cant decide on what I want. I think after getting a bit more insight into animation I might try to make one.
Also, I really liked KuleDud3's outro, which I think was a very good example of what I would want in terms of one. It's just one of those outros you dont want to skip ;D
 
I really don't like intros on videos I watch unless they're after a bit of footage that was shown. But even then, I feel like it interrupts the flow of the video if it's any longer than 2-3 seconds I think Outros are fine (I need to start sticking an end card on my videos lol) and are a great way to get people to look at your stuff.
 
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