Shehzad
The Brown Fudge
I've been doing Let's Plays for a while now from Skyrim, Fallout 4, Gmod and The Forest. Now they've been hit and miss for me but I'm leaving some helpful tips to help you grow that viewer base a little bit more. Just a reminder if you have started a youtube recently I highly don't recommend doing let's play's early on until you get some sort of viewer/subscriber base unless your very confident that your videos can bring a new niche.
- Tag your videos properly! Look at the amount of search results for your title and look at how many views the first page videos get. This will allow you to see your competition. One good way to get tags is to go on some of the popular videos for your let's play and press "ctrl+u" you can then do "ctrl+f" and search for "tags." You can then copy the tags of that popular video to decrease that competition. I cannot stress enough how important tags are. I seriously recommend watching as many videos as you can on how tagging works because I can easily make a thread dedicated to tagging. This will be where most if not how half of your views will come from.
- Don't be generic! For example if your doing a fallout let's play Don't just have "let's play fallout part 1" use keywords that relate to that video to draw people in. Better example would be "The Journey Begins | Fallout 4 | Part 1" The more dramatic the title the better.
- Try not to do a hugely anticipated game on release day! A lot of very big youtubers will always get there hands on press release or early copies of big games (like fallout 4 etc) before you can get your hands on it therefore keep your eye out because if this happens your chances of having your video watched becomes extremely low, even nill because people will already be doing let's play before your regions release day.
- Establish a viewer base! Don't start out your youtube channel doing let's plays unless your confident you can create a new niche. I learnt this the hard way. Keep your starting videos short about 5 - 10 minutes so you can establish viewers and subscribers. Most people will not have the attention spam to click on a 20 minute video if they don't know who you are!
- Promote your videos! Twitter, Facebook even Vine. Try to share some of your work and I don't mean spam. You can get lucky if you catch enough people's attention that's why I use vine I went from 20 views to 156 views in the one day because my vine got 300+ loops. My old channel would get 1000+ views on some the videos because of the promotions I did.
- THUMBNAILS THUMBNAIL THUMBNAILS! One of the biggest drawing points of viewers. Spend time on your thumbnails, make them look professional. Don't use the same old generic fonts. Learn some Photoshop techniques like texturing, HDR effects and high pass effects to catch people's eye.
- Never have long pauses! Edit out long pauses in your videos only stick to the good bits. The more you do commentary the better you will become at talking for long periods of time. I went from speaking for 3-5 minutes and cutting to the next commentary to being able to constantly speak for 20 minutes.
- Spend time on your video! Let's Play's may be easy to record but make sure to watch it back and add effects like music, video effects, special effects especially during sequences (like if a big fight happens) this allows you to set the mood for your videos so becomes unique. I highly recommend watching your let's plays back as much as you can when editing as this will allow you to see any problems on your video and change them accordingly.
- Topics! If you struggle to talk about things note down topics to talk about in the video so its not boring around less dramatic parts. You can talk about latest movies, politics, anything at all that is popular or has gone viral recently. This will help to generate more comments because people will give you their opinions about your topics.
- Video Length! I recommend doing 10 minutes videos if you can manage that even though I do 20 minute videos. People's attention spams are short therefore starting off try not do to extremely long let's plays.
- Sharing! Let your friends, family know and hound them to share it. They will be your viewer base when you start off assuming your not unsociable.
- Try to roleplay! The more you roleplay the more people may become interested in your let's plays. Are you going be comedic, serious or ruthless as your character?
- Don't use Google adword! Don't use adword unless you know what your doing. It can cost you a butt load and just because you use it won't mean that you will suddenly become popular especially if you don't know what your doing! You can also get your account suspended if you don't read how their policy works! Just using it to get more traffic violates one of their terms so make sure your aware of how to use it first hand (https://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/answer/6020954?rd=1)
- Colab! Try and join communites so you can meet people. Colabs with other youtubers will allow you both to grow your channel. Your videos become much more entertaining when you are playing with someone who you connect well with.
Last edited:
