What Most of You are Doing Wrong

[Painter]

I'm so glad you know my niche better than I do!
My last video:
Overall 1:40, Reddit 1:37
Longest video (that I have stats for):
Overall: Overall 1:54, Reddit: 1:36
One video per 2 weeks and still more subs than most daily let's play channels. Interesting, eh? As if quality mattered.
Pretty much nobody in electronics (except from Louis Rossmann who uploads unedited and EEVBlog who does Youtube full time) publishes more than 1/week.
I will check the stats on the new video as soon as they appear and update.

Sadly you don't have a channel link to criticize

I actually don't know your niche at all (It's not popular), but it's easy to get the info on how good or bad a video is performing. Getting high retention for very short videos is pretty easy. I think you mean: Most daily let's play channels that are underperforming.

I don't promote my videos/channels. And that means I don't share my content here or anywhere else. I allow the Algorithm to do all the work for me.

 

[YouTubers United Podcast]

I bet your audience retention for those thousands of views are low. There's really no benefit in external traffic because it only weakens your chances for the Algorithm to rank your videos high and suggest them alongside high traffic videos. Most of the people with successful channels on this site will always discourage people from depending on external traffic sources (reddit) for views. They do more harm than good in the long run.

It did hurt my audience retention. And then a week later the algorithm fed me hundreds of thousands of views as a punishment.
moral of the story: don't discount reddit's ability to send the right signals to the algorithm.

 

[EVO]

I don't promote my videos/channels. And that means I don't share my content here or anywhere else. I allow the Algorithm to do all the work for me.

Amen to that

 

[PureDangles]

Seriously man. THANK YOU! I always tag like you did in your first example, and am never sure how it works. I am actually going to go back on my 10 most recent uploads and change the tags on them! Thank you so much!

 

[PositivelyBrainwashed]

I bet your audience retention for those thousands of views are low. There's really no benefit in external traffic because it only weakens your chances for the Algorithm to rank your videos high and suggest them alongside high traffic videos. Most of the people with successful channels on this site will always discourage people from depending on external traffic sources (reddit) for views. They do more harm than good in the long run.

I very disagree with this. Reddit allows the watch time of my videos to massively increase. It also allows blogs and big sites to find my videos and write about them. So while my audience retention is about a minute lower than average, it gives them that initial boost that's so important during the first 48-72 hours of an upload. You can have the perfect audience retention at 100%, but if your video only has 100 views, you will not compete against a video with 40% watch time and 10,000 plus views. Once your video is doing well on searches, it has a high chance of being suggested on other people's videos. This is where you more than compensate for the initial poor watch time from reddit. And at this point, your videos will be promoted by Youtube 24/7.

And you also need to consider the long term benefits. The fact you can easily get thousands of subscribers from Reddit if you know what you're doing, these are viewers who will watch your next videos with much higher watch time.

 

[Turk-Lvlone]

SEO is important but if there's other videos out there with similar titles and tags, your video won't make it to the first page and if it's not on the first page, there's little chance it will be seen by people searching especially if you're a smaller channel. Promoting is a good way to at least get some views and possibly subscribers.

 

[Miss Medi]

An interesting post @GamingwithNick and I largely agree with it. I don't think SEO and title optimisation are something easily understood and I find it helps to also look at the terms people have searched to discover your previous videos (can be found in youtube analytics) and use these as keywords. Still very much learning as I go and this is an area I've yet to master. I have some vids on the front page, others nowhere near..seems hit and miss lol! But thanks for the post.

 

[GamingwithNick]

I have a question about this sort of thing.

In a couple of weeks a game is coming out that no one has covered (there's a couple of dev videos), called "Phoning Home". I did the usual search check on things like "Phoning Home Gameplay", Phoning Home Game" etc, but random videos with nothing to do with the game appear, and VidIQ scored the competition at 42. My question is, when I cover this game, am I actually going to appear in the search? Or is YT going to prefer the older videos which don't relate to the game?

(after writing this I feel I may be a little off-topic, apologies if it is).

With 51 subscribers. Trying to rank for a keyword that has a competition of 40 will get you nothing to be honest. at 50 subs, you need like <5 competition score per my experience.[DOUBLEPOST=1485820825,1485820779][/DOUBLEPOST]

Reddit has brought in thousands of views onto my main channel. To discount its possible benefit for a video/channel is bad advice.

That being said, your recommendation for SEO is in the right direction. SEO gives a channel long-term prospects for sure. Vid IQ was always sub par for me though. I prefer TubeBuddy's tag explorer, but I suppose that's just personal preference. Was there any reason you chose VidIQ over Buddy? (not trying to argue, just genuinely curious)

Says the person with 50 subscribers. How well is reddit working for you?[DOUBLEPOST=1485820871][/DOUBLEPOST]

I bet your audience retention for those thousands of views are low. There's really no benefit in external traffic because it only weakens your chances for the Algorithm to rank your videos high and suggest them alongside high traffic videos. Most of the people with successful channels on this site will always discourage people from depending on external traffic sources (reddit) for views. They do more harm than good in the long run.

Well put! I agree 100%[DOUBLEPOST=1485820917][/DOUBLEPOST]

Seriously man. THANK YOU! I always tag like you did in your first example, and am never sure how it works. I am actually going to go back on my 10 most recent uploads and change the tags on them! Thank you so much!

Like I have said, it wont work over night. It is a great habit to get into and sometimes the light shines on your channel. Good work!

 

[Steggs101]

With 51 subscribers. Trying to rank for a keyword that has a competition of 40 will get you nothing to be honest. at 50 subs, you need like <5 competition score per my experience.[DOUBLEPOST=1485820825,1485820779][/DOUBLEPOST]

Says the person with 50 subscribers. How well is reddit working for you?[DOUBLEPOST=1485820871][/DOUBLEPOST]

Well put! I agree 100%[DOUBLEPOST=1485820917][/DOUBLEPOST]

Like I have said, it wont work over night. It is a great habit to get into and sometimes the light shines on your channel. Good work!

Nice one man, thanks!

 

[GamingwithNick]

SEO is important but if there's other videos out there with similar titles and tags, your video won't make it to the first page and if it's not on the first page, there's little chance it will be seen by people searching especially if you're a smaller channel. Promoting is a good way to at least get some views and possibly subscribers.

This was a great post all the way until the end. I agree that you shouldn't use similar titles and tags as others. Why would you be making a video focused on something that is way overdone anyways? That is the real mistake. If you can't find a sub topic within that topic to focus on, then you will have a tough go. Non paid promotions (usually spamming) are not good for business. Notice that you all end up getting tons of comments that look like this:

"Yo bro! Great video. I too make videos on this subject. Check em out. BTW I subbed "

That is the kind of traffic you are subjecting your channel to. Most of the time they did sub, and will become a dead sub. This hurts you in the end. All my opinion of course. What do I know.[DOUBLEPOST=1485821184,1485821129][/DOUBLEPOST]

Nice one man, thanks!

Even with 5500 subs, I still aim for videos below 20 according to VID IQ. 100k searches with a competition of around 10 seems to be a great sweet spot.