I am afraid I could not agree with
@Damon more. If you are dedicated to Shorts videos more power to you... just don't expect traditional results. YouTube is pushing Shorts because they are breaking into the market and trying to steal real estate from other platforms who are infringing on YouTube's hold for world-dominance as the go to video platform. Do not mistake that for long term value. I know there is a creator fund for Shorts... but be realistic; do not ever expect to make money via Shorts. Things can change, but as the entirety of these platforms is currently constructed there is almost zero chance you ever see a check for a channel based on Shorts videos.
And there is nothing wrong with that. You don't need to be focused on the money. If you are putting out videos to put out videos and short form is your style of art then have at it! But if that is the case there are a couple things we need to look at.
For starters one of the key features of TubeBuddy is the keyword explorer. This gives you insight into the traffic and competition for the keywords you use to help YouTube index and serve your video out to viewers. There is value in using this tool for Shorts videos... but understand that actually ranking for these keyword phrases is based on the performance of your video against the videos which already exist for these keywords and watch time (also CTR) are the basis for judgement here. So you are going to be competing against fifteen years of videos all of which are likely averaging around ten minutes in length (thanks to the ad requirements over the years) and you are competing with one minute videos. That is going to be a tall order. Not an impossible feat, but a very tall order. The expectation here is that you still need to make great thumbnails, titles and you still need to do the keyword research... if your videos have value then there is value in doing them right. But you are going to be sacrificing a lot of the long term, evergreen views that you would normally get with regular content.
The value in Shorts videos is the Tik Tok style algorithm used to serve this content. It's fast. It's easy to get a video placed in front of a million users and you can grow your audience to amazing heights in a ridiculous amount of time. Don't expect to make money off of them. Expect that it will be very difficult to get this audience to respond to CTA's or to click on links in the description (this is a spastic audience focusd on shiny things, they don't cater well to CTA's).
Ok, I'm being long winded and whiney about Shorts here, sorry about that. What can you do to get a better response out of your work? My biggest suggestion is to spend some time really studying the guys on Tik Tok. That's what YouTube wants; they want Tik Tok and thus far the big trend is for people to simply copy/paste their old vids over from Tik Tok. Go watch these guys and make fresh, new content that mimics what caused them to be successful on Tik Tok. Be mindful of trends and jump on them immediately. Continue to put thumbnails, descriptions and metadata in these videos; there is still value in them and a hit can still top search ranks or make the suggested feed and there is value in that as well so you want to be well optimized. But really focus on Tik Tok and follow the trends, styles and tone that made creators successful over there and bring it here with your own fresh spin.
