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YouTube Help t
- Thread starter Koochoolootv
- Start date
In a year you only have 14 long form videos. First off that's great that you managed to have over 800 subs, but just guessing here.... the only conclusion is to increase your video production. Seems like a real chance to perhaps double your market by doubling your video production. ? ? ?
Likes and Dislikes, comments, and none of that have no bearing on your video performance or suggestions. To help you understand how YouTube works, let me explain.
YouTubes algorithm is driven by Binge Worth Content (BWC from here on out). YouTube uses three indicators to determine if the content is binge-worthy.
1. The Click. This is a measure of how many times your thumbnail is shown to people vs how many times they clicked on it.
2. The Stay. This stay is what percentage of your video the viewer watches of your video after they clicked on your content.
3. The Return. The return is how many viewers, after watching your first video, click on and watch another one of your videos.
What more than likely happened to your video that got 130K views and then died, is that a lot of people clicked on your thumbnail, but most did not watch the video and did not go to another one of your videos. Initially, the algorithm saw the clicks and started suggesting your video, but when the data came in (takes a few days) it showed the watch percentage was low and people left your video and channel and went somewhere else.
Contrary to what a lot of people think, YouTube doe snot care what a viewer wants to watch. YouTube's algorithm is programmed to use psychological manipulation to lead people to BWC which will keep them watching video after video without realizing what they are doing. Think about it like this. You say to your kids, " I want a salad for supper." But your kids start putting cookies, ice cream, pizza, chips, popcorn, and all this stuff in front of your face and before you know it, you have been stuffing your face with junk food for the last 20 minutes. That is how YouTube's suggestions now works. It's sole purpose it to promote BWC.
Understanding how YouTube's algorithm works will help you not to be so confused. YouTube wants to classify your content and your channel as a BWC channel, or not a BWC channel. They use the three indicators I outlined above to determine this. You can have one video that get's labeled as BWC, and it may get a lot of views, but it will not help your channel overall. To really have your channel take off, you need all your content to qualify as BWC. Tick all three of those boxes most of the time, and you will be getting millions of views overnight.
OMG. you have only 20 videos on your channel. I am glad that one of your video picked up the popularity. But, lets not depend on one video to do all the wonders. Keep creating content. Audience love consistency. When you will upload lot of content within a month. You can save your watch hours.
Thanks a lot The Jungle Explorer. Your reply is a big help. I can confirm that ticking all those three items has been my true aim whole this time. However, #1 and #2 is not being achieved due to algorithms recommending me on non relevant content (for instance on languages that are neither Persian nor English or on religious content?!). To prove myself that my content is click worthy, I ran a Youtube ad for 5 days on targeted placements and the results were great. Gained 150 subscribers and good traffic to videos. That's why I'm struggling to understand how I can set things right and get organically recommended on the right content.
I can't help you with the Persian angle. I would say, do all your SEO in Persian, not English. Maybe you already are. I am just trying to think why you would be getting English traffic. Something is triggering it. It's hard to know exactly what. It could be that objects in your video have English writing on them or something. I don't know.
I would not worry about producing frequent videos. Quality is way more important than consistency. The YT algorithm could care less how often you post. It used to be that it did, but not since they switched to the BWC algorithm. Everything has changed now. One video a month is a lot for an animation channel. Animation is a lot of hard work. Focus on quality. Focus on telling the story.
Your best bet is to not worry about the YouTube algorithm at all. Grow your audience slowly and organically by promoting your content elsewhere on other platforms.
Monetization on YouTube is really not worth much anymore, so don't worry about reaching 1000 subs. You need to monetize in other ways. Maybe look for sponsors and run your own ads. I monetize my videos through affiliate links for products that appear in the videos. I am not sure how that would work for an animation channel though. AD dollars on YouTube are drying up. The CEO of YouTube made it clear in his last letter to creators that we all need to find a different way to make money. Ever since YT started showing ads on Shorts, big advertisers started jumping ship and canceling contracts. I watched my earning drop 80% as a result. I still get 100k views a month and am racking up subs like never before, but the money from YT ads is pretty much gone, and that is not just me, it is everyone. What I am saying is, there is no treasury once you reach YT monetization. Sure, there are some pennies left in the box, but nothing that will compensate you for the work you put in. You need to find a different way to make money. You are an animator, there are better ways to make good money in animation.
If you don't mind, exactly what did you use to promote your channel? Were you advertising certain videos or the channel as a whole? Thx!
I had a lengthy reply and then saw the above. Quite frankly I would keep doing that and just consider it a loss leader for your channel that you might make up in the future. I mean you're only 150 subs away from 1000 and then you can just focus on producing more content to get those watch hours up Let's be real.. kids are going to blow through those 14 episodes in no time, maybe even in 1 day! lol... so again... it really just seems the only thing that could be improved is more content. Instead of thinking about how to get one of those 14 videos to go viral, I would be doing whatever it takes to somehow double or triple your monthly videos. Maybe you could make each video no longer than say 2:00, would that allow you to produce more content each month?
btw.. one of my videos had over 100k views in one month recently as well. It also died, I spent time creating similar content, similar keywords, etc, etc, nothing took off. If you research it, it does seem to happen fairly often to a bunch of channels and we're all left scratching our head trying to duplicate it's success. Probably time better spent creating new content.
Sure. I created some short (unlisted) videos (you might call it a sample) for the ads. Requested actions were to "Watch Now" which took them to the full video's link, and "Subscribe" on the ribbon below the ad video which took them to my channel.
As I said before, reaching 1000 sub doesn't seem difficult. I can do it with another round of ads, worst case. It's the watch hours for me. Even if I double up contents, at the rate of today, I wouldn't still reach the watch hours any time soon...
I had a good laugh at "scratching our heads"
) what you said is literally what I was doing for a whole months with NO results. after that, it was just my fingers crossed for the algorithms to pick me up just ONE more time '
Thanks, did you use Google Adsense? I'm considering paid promotion as well, you're the first one on this forum that I've read where they did paid promotion, so I'm curious what service you used. Thx!
Opinions are not facts, my worthless opinion is YouTube is just fine.
What's wrong with that? That's how it is for most channels, I'm in the same boat. I'm probably looking at another year or so before being monetized. If you're in it for the long run, not sure it really matters if you're monetized in 1 year or 5 years. But you're in a decent position to sell merch like plush, stuffed, animals, dolls, etc, all based on your characters. I would look into getting that ready as well. Research "plush animals dolls from your content", etc, etc. Sites like.... https://www.budsies.com/
This, in my subconscious, was what I asked this question here for. I know hitting the monetization milestone is nothing compared to my goal (which is to teach Persian to bilingual kids outside of Iran). However, it's still a checkbox for me. Reaching 1000 subs doesn't seem too difficult, it's the watch hours that seems unrealistic without the help of the algorithms.
Sponsors are only interested if I've got enough audience. Coming up with different ways to make money is not something I'm very good at. But if as you say, YT is no longer such a good source, then I'll have no way than put some serious thoughts in to it. Relieving to know I'm not missing out on too much
Thank you again for the time and guidance!
You don't need the algorithm's help to reach the watch time. All you need to do is make your content engaging so that people watch it. I get almost no suggestions from the algorithm, and I still get over 5,000 watch hours a month. You are in the kid's market, and there is no better market to be in to get watch hours. If your content is interesting to kids, you will have no problem getting watch hours.
As far as sponsors go, again it is about the quality of your product. I am not saying that you will get someone who is going to pay you lots of money but should be able to find someone that will give you something. In 2020, I started another channel and started getting sponsors with only 100 subs. Of course, these were affiliate sponsors, not direct sponsors. I just don't know enough about children's channels, and especially Persian children's channels to offer you much advice on getting sponsors.
I do know that in the US, it is much harder to earn money through YouTube ads on children's content than any other genres because of COPPA (Children's Online Privacy Protection Act). COPPA prevents YouTube from delivering Targeted Ads to children in the US. Targeted Ads are the highest-paying ads. Non-targeted ads pay only a fraction of what targeted ads pay. YouTube was sued by the government and paid 180 million dollars in fines for violating COPPA in 2019. Since then, YouTube has been very careful to not target children with ads. This is why, when you upload a video, you have to list it as made for children or not made for children.
If you choose, "Yes, it's made for kids", then this tells YouTube to not track the activity on the video for the purpose of showing targeted ads. When advertisers buy ad space on YouTube, they can choose between Targeted and Non-targeted. Because the history of online advertising has shown that Targeted ads are 2000% more successful than non-targeted ads, most advertisers choose to have their ads shown only on targeted ad space. For this reason, YouTube (Google) has to lower the price of the non-targeted ad space significantly on children's content to encourage advertisers to buy it. This means much lower earnings for the creator However, this is how it works in the US and the EU. I have no idea if the same is true for where you are.
btw.. one of my videos had over 100k views in one month recently as well. It also died, I spent time creating similar content, similar keywords, etc, etc, nothing took off. If you research it, it does seem to happen fairly often to a bunch of channels and we're all left scratching our head trying to duplicate it's success. Probably time better spent creating new content.
So, Derral Eves and a couple of his star students say when you have a "hit" long-form video, you are supposed to let it breathe for at least a couple weeks before doing a follow-up. The idea is to let the algorithm keep working on that particular video and then when the interest levels go down, you feed it with a follow-up video for maximum effect.
I am sure I am not explaining it well but the idea is let your hit video some time to fizzle down before directly following up again. I've followed this advice and it seems to be effective. In my case, I cannot ever produce videos fast enough so there is always a backlog of ideas and followups I want to do along with ongoing experimentation videos I do.