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Video Review Can you please tell me what I'm doing wrong?

Amanda Summers

Known Member
138
9
User name: Amanda Summers
Title of thread: Can you please tell me what I'm doing wrong?
Self review: I am doing everything I know how to do, but I get less than 100 views in the first week of posting. I cannot grow faster than 1 sub a day or less. I cannot even rank for the keywords the videos are about. Any advice is appreciated.
Channel review or Video review? Video review

Link to Video:
View: https://youtu.be/LXYV-QNs3es

Link to other review post:
View: https://youtu.be/wVu43jmSQvQ
 

Stanley | Team TB

Amazingly Decent and Not-At-All Terrible Fishing
Administrator
TubeBuddy Staff
2,644
25
Subscriber Goal
250000
I am afraid you must first get out of the 'What am I doing wrong?' mindset. You are not giving yourself near enough credit. You have achieved over 70,000 views on a little over 100 videos. That is nothing short of exceptional and accomplishing over 100 views per video in your first week of being published for a channel with less than 50 subscribers... look at those numbers! They speak for themselves!

You have a very specific niche; you are targeting Nepal tourists. A quick Google search reveals that in 2020 Nepal saw 230,000 tourists (a decline in previous years, for obvious reasons) and commonly sees around 500,000 tourists. If we consider that twice a many people likely want to travel to Nepal but simply haven't done it we can assume that you have a niche of between 500,000 and 1,000,000 possible viewers. We need to make some assumptions here; how many of these travelers are looking for information on Nepal travel (many are likely return visitors or seeing family and are not searching for travel tips) ? How many are turning to YouTube for this information (versus people like me who simply did a Google search)? This is going to leave you with a niche says of probably less than 500,000 people. Still good numbers, but you can not expect to get millions of views based on that sample size. Reconsider the value of your 70,000 views versus that number and you will see your impact.

Now, there are other factors at play. Kids... the under-25 demographic are not going to be as drawn to your type of content. They want splashy, fast-paced content with lots of colors and yelling and stuff to keep their attention span. They make up a large portion of the traffic on YouTube in general. However, they also have no money and the CPM for ads targeting this demographic are simply pathetic. You are going to target an older generation of viewers (generally speaking viewers tend to gravitate towards creators of similar age to themselves). This puts you in a far-higher earning demographic. So while you are not inherently targeting a high-volume demographic you are going to get far more 'bang for you buck' per view. I will ad that you should take that personally; the information that you can provide is simply more valuable.

My two cents on your fist video here; I love that you are giving your presentation in front of a keyed-out background of photos. I love that you are editing your each bullet-point. Your presentation style is very educational and easy to listen to, you nailed the title (IMO). But...

You need to rework that thumbnail and you know exactly what I am talking about. Your previous video is this big, red, dramatic 'Is Nepal Safe?' You have this very clickable title but the imagery in your current thumbnail is muted. It's hard to tell what you are holding and it does nothing to compel my click. You are holding up a roll of toilet paper and I like this approach, but let's break down why you did this. One of the things that artists do to compel the click is to create intrigue, and it is a common tactic to present something that is 'out of place' in your thumbnail. This is what you are doing... so let's expand on that. Get artistic with it. Take a roll of toilet paper out into the street... make sure the street is very representative of the Nepalese culture and geography. You are representing your content here and you want that street to stand out as background imagery. Set the toilet paper in the street and take a picture of the toilet paper... your goal being to juxtaposition the out-of-pace toilet paper versus your Nepalese setting. As a bonus you are also following another strong rule of graphic design by creating contrast. The softness of the toilet paper versus the not-softness of the street and also the light color of the TP versus the darker tone of the street. My point being that you are speaking through the photograph. You can add text an fluff it up, but the photo alone will create far more intrigue than the more simplistic use of tan, text and a plane in your current thumbnail.

Of course I must note; my thumbnail suggestions are based on what's 'normal' on YouTube and it is ENTIRELY possible that you know your audience and demographic far better than I... if you are getting CTR's closer to 10% you need to totally ignore my advice. But if you are seeing CTR's under 2% then that should be the thing to focus on.

Finally, looking into your metadata I do see some flaws. Your title was awesome in this video, but I see that the title was not mentioned in the description. You need to do that... it needs to mentioned in the first 200 characters. Your title acts as a 'super-tag' for your video, and when combined with the exact same phrase being mentioned in the first 200 characters of the description you are really optimizing hard for that term. Currently you are not really ranking for the terms you are targeting and that is costing you some views. You should target less-competitive terms until you have gained the authority in the niche to start ranking for the larger terms. But in the meantime you should also give your videos their best chance to succeed for strong, individual terms by making sure you enter that main keyword phrase into the title and description. It will help you to rank better.
 
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Reactions: Amanda Summers

Stanley | Team TB

Amazingly Decent and Not-At-All Terrible Fishing
Administrator
TubeBuddy Staff
2,644
25
Subscriber Goal
250000
As an aside; for these reviews we require that you review someone else before you ask for a review... you posted a link to a different video. If you wouldn't mind going back and posting a link to an actual review that you provided; we use that to verify that everyone is contributing to feedback. Thank you!
 
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Reactions: Amanda Summers
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Amanda Summers

Amanda Summers

Known Member
138
9
As an aside; for these reviews we require that you review someone else before you ask for a review... you posted a link to a different video. If you wouldn't mind going back and posting a link to an actual review that you provided; we use that to verify that everyone is contributing to feedback. Thank you!
I thought I did that. So, the URL of what I post for the person? I'll go back and read the instructions again. I'll do another review and see if I can do it right.
 
OP
OP
Amanda Summers

Amanda Summers

Known Member
138
9
I am afraid you must first get out of the 'What am I doing wrong?' mindset. You are not giving yourself near enough credit. You have achieved over 70,000 views on a little over 100 videos. That is nothing short of exceptional and accomplishing over 100 views per video in your first week of being published for a channel with less than 50 subscribers... look at those numbers! They speak for themselves!

You have a very specific niche; you are targeting Nepal tourists. A quick Google search reveals that in 2020 Nepal saw 230,000 tourists (a decline in previous years, for obvious reasons) and commonly sees around 500,000 tourists. If we consider that twice a many people likely want to travel to Nepal but simply haven't done it we can assume that you have a niche of between 500,000 and 1,000,000 possible viewers. We need to make some assumptions here; how many of these travelers are looking for information on Nepal travel (many are likely return visitors or seeing family and are not searching for travel tips) ? How many are turning to YouTube for this information (versus people like me who simply did a Google search)? This is going to leave you with a niche says of probably less than 500,000 people. Still good numbers, but you can not expect to get millions of views based on that sample size. Reconsider the value of your 70,000 views versus that number and you will see your impact.

Now, there are other factors at play. Kids... the under-25 demographic are not going to be as drawn to your type of content. They want splashy, fast-paced content with lots of colors and yelling and stuff to keep their attention span. They make up a large portion of the traffic on YouTube in general. However, they also have no money and the CPM for ads targeting this demographic are simply pathetic. You are going to target an older generation of viewers (generally speaking viewers tend to gravitate towards creators of similar age to themselves). This puts you in a far-higher earning demographic. So while you are not inherently targeting a high-volume demographic you are going to get far more 'bang for you buck' per view. I will ad that you should take that personally; the information that you can provide is simply more valuable.

My two cents on your fist video here; I love that you are giving your presentation in front of a keyed-out background of photos. I love that you are editing your each bullet-point. Your presentation style is very educational and easy to listen to, you nailed the title (IMO). But...

You need to rework that thumbnail and you know exactly what I am talking about. Your previous video is this big, red, dramatic 'Is Nepal Safe?' You have this very clickable title but the imagery in your current thumbnail is muted. It's hard to tell what you are holding and it does nothing to compel my click. You are holding up a roll of toilet paper and I like this approach, but let's break down why you did this. One of the things that artists do to compel the click is to create intrigue, and it is a common tactic to present something that is 'out of place' in your thumbnail. This is what you are doing... so let's expand on that. Get artistic with it. Take a roll of toilet paper out into the street... make sure the street is very representative of the Nepalese culture and geography. You are representing your content here and you want that street to stand out as background imagery. Set the toilet paper in the street and take a picture of the toilet paper... your goal being to juxtaposition the out-of-pace toilet paper versus your Nepalese setting. As a bonus you are also following another strong rule of graphic design by creating contrast. The softness of the toilet paper versus the not-softness of the street and also the light color of the TP versus the darker tone of the street. My point being that you are speaking through the photograph. You can add text an fluff it up, but the photo alone will create far more intrigue than the more simplistic use of tan, text and a plane in your current thumbnail.

Of course I must note; my thumbnail suggestions are based on what's 'normal' on YouTube and it is ENTIRELY possible that you know your audience and demographic far better than I... if you are getting CTR's closer to 10% you need to totally ignore my advice. But if you are seeing CTR's under 2% then that should be the thing to focus on.

Finally, looking into your metadata I do see some flaws. Your title was awesome in this video, but I see that the title was not mentioned in the description. You need to do that... it needs to mentioned in the first 200 characters. Your title acts as a 'super-tag' for your video, and when combined with the exact same phrase being mentioned in the first 200 characters of the description you are really optimizing hard for that term. Currently you are not really ranking for the terms you are targeting and that is costing you some views. You should target less-competitive terms until you have gained the authority in the niche to start ranking for the larger terms. But in the meantime you should also give your videos their best chance to succeed for strong, individual terms by making sure you enter that main keyword phrase into the title and description. It will help you to rank better.
I didn't see that I'd gotten a response. Sorry I missed this. Thank you so much. I'll do this from now on and yes, we just cannot seem to nail the thumbnail concept. Such awesome feedback (and kind). It just clicked for me. Find a good way to make the title a ranking word and then include it in the first part of the description. So simple.

I was so into what I'm doing wrong that I started a new channel to see if I could get it off to a good start. Now both channels are a mess. I'm going back to just one channel and moving the content over. I'm going to try a variation of the '30 videos in 30 days' method. Maybe 15, and see it that works. So we're getting a lot of content ready for it. April will be our big month. Good idea? You see, I'm just getting embarrassed by how long it's taking. It feels like rejection by all the people coming to Nepal who need to hear what I have to say and didn't click. I know it's irrational, but that's how it feels. Thanks to TubeBuddy I'm actually seeing my videos in search, so I think I'm on the right path.
 
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Amanda Summers

Amanda Summers

Known Member
138
9
As an aside; for these reviews we require that you review someone else before you ask for a review... you posted a link to a different video. If you wouldn't mind going back and posting a link to an actual review that you provided; we use that to verify that everyone is contributing to feedback. Thank you!
So sorry: Here's another one. I'll post it in the edit.
User name: Amanda Summers
Title of thread: Can you please tell me what I'm doing wrong?
Self review: I am doing everything I know how to do, but I get less than 100 views in the first week of posting. I cannot grow faster than 1 sub a day or less. I cannot even rank for the keywords the videos are about. Any advice is appreciated.
Channel review or Video review? Video review

Link to Video:
View: https://youtu.be/LXYV-QNs3es

Link to other review post:
View: https://youtu.be/wVu43jmSQvQ
Here's a review I gave. I think I copied the other one from the Youtube link.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Stanley | Team TB