Hi James @Valier ,Update 10. The 8th Video.
Finally, after almost 3 months of craziness, the 8th video premiered yesterday and went live on the channel...When I scripted this video and began the early stages of editing, I didn't have the 99% of the audience that I have right now. It was my initial plan that this would be the video that could propel my channel forward.
View: https://youtu.be/4bkk8oG9HRA
Now, let's talk about my strategy with this one...
INITIAL PLAN
My intentions with this video was to target a few different markets, Tyler1's fanbase, the Twitch community, and the League of Legends community.
My ideal hopes were that if the video was good enough, it would be watched by other live streamers on their streams and it would expose the video and the channel to thousands of other people. Of course, I was ideally hoping that someone like Tyler1 would react to it on stream himself.
It was a risky video, but my thinking at the time was: "hey, I don't have much of an audience built up, I'm fine to experiment and take some risks..."
That was the plan. But there are some clear faults with strategy, especially considering what happened to the channel after I began creating this video.
THE UNEXPECTED During the creation of this video, the channel had started to blow up.
I went from someone with about 200 subscribers, to over 250k by the time this video was wrapping up.
Although it was amazing to see, there was a slight concern in the back of my mind: I initially started creating this Tyler1 video with the idea that I didn't have a huge audience, and could make that gamble. Now I had a massive audience, a lot of momentum, and it probably wasn't the best time to be taking risks with my content, it would be best to ride the wave of that momentum...
...but after writing a 24 page script, and already sinking in hours of work on editing, I felt like I was already beyond the point of return. And so I sucked it up and said "alright, we'll have to take this risk and see where it gets us".
Another flaw in the strategy here is fairly obvious from a marketing standpoint: would anyone from those communities I was targeting even be interested in subjects related to business, money, finance, etc?
Probably not.
Why I didn't emphasise this concern in my mind is beyond me... I think I was blinded by the idea of someone I've been a fan of (Tyler1) and a community that I had been fairly active in (Twitch) seeing my work, and enjoying it. In other words, I was thinking with passion and love, but not about the target market and the audience my other videos were collecting.
Yes, if this video blew up I could have expanded my audience into a whole new market, but if they're only there for one video - what's the point?
But once I had made that decision to continue with this video, and see how things go, I had to brush aside those thoughts and focus on creating the best video I could.
THE PREMIEREI also wanted to test out using the premiere feature on YouTube. Once my audience grew, I figure it would be really amazing to turn this video's release into an actual event. I can hype it up, release a trailer (as I did), and get people pumped up for it...
So how did it go?
Pretty good! Leading up to the video's release, I stayed in the chat room and interacted with my audience, answering questions, etc.
And as the video was starting, I realised that another Twitch streamer was watching the video live on his own stream to an audience of about 3.8k - 4k viewers.
That combined with the notifications sent out to my subscribers gave the video a consistent 1k viewers at the premiere throughout (amazing!!). Overall the video seemed well-received. The streamer who was watching it live on his own stream enjoyed it a lot, and I'm sure some of his viewers came on to the channel and subscribed + liked the video afterwards.
We totalled about 4k views on the actual video itself in the first hour of its release, and by the time I woke up today we were at about 13k views on the video, and as I write this the video currently stands at 20k views.
PREDICTIONS There's a few things that can happen here, it's just a matter of whether the algorithm finds the right audience to target the video to.
I think the video can definitely hit around 60 - 100k viewers in the next week or so.
However, this has potential to go even bigger than that if the algorithm starts pushing the video out to Tyler's audience (which I'm hoping the metadata of the video will be able to help with).
Right now, I am sure that the algorithm is pushing this video to my audience, and others who are similar to my audience. Although it could take a while for the algorithm to start testing it with Tyler1's audience.
But I believe once Tyler1's audience start picking up on the video, and more people from that community grow aware of the video, the algorithm will adjust and it will begin to be promoted across to that audience which I'm sure it will do well with.
Of course, if Tyler1 himself actually reacts to the video, that will be an immense boost.
But all I can do for now is play the waiting game with this video and just focus on the next project. The algorithm took 3 months after its release to start pushing my Fake Guru video to the right audience, so who knows? Some other YouTuber friends that I've made recently have had their own videos start getting pushed by the algorithm 5 days later. It really is just a matter of letting the algorithm do its thing and hopefully it adjusts and starts targetting the best audience for this video.
If not, then the video will sit comfortably at roughly 60 - 100k views.
REFLECTIONI definitely don't regret making this video, not at all. I learnt so much during the creation of this video, and all of these skills are going to translate through into my other videos!
However, would I have created this video if I had the audience I have right now? Definitely not.
But that's okay - I have to remind myself that I only have 8 videos-worth of experience on YouTube. Mistakes are bound to be made. And besides, we still haven't got enough data points on this new video to really determine whether it is successful or not.
Based on the comments, and likes, my core audience has enjoyed it for the most part (even those with no interest in gaming or Tyler1), which is something I'm quite proud about. I think it's proven to myself that I'm able to take something/someone fairly niche and be able to present that topic/person in a way that others who have never heard about it can enjoy. That's a really great achievement in my eye!
Also, in terms of watch time and average view duration, this video has done very well (which I expected due to its insane length). It's currently got an average view duration of 13:44. That's more than any of my other videos which gives me hope that the algorithm is going to keep pushing this thing out and will and on the right audience at some point in the next few days/weeks.
CONCLUSIONNow, it's time to rest my brain and imagination for 2/3 days and recuperate from this project, and then we're straight on to the next one!
This next one is something I'm pretty hyped about since I know my core audience has been asking for a video on it, and it's a fairly huge subject/industry with quite a lot of controversy. I'll give you a hint, it starts with an "M" and ends with a "Marketing"
There's also a lot more I want to tell you all regarding my plans for the Patreon page, and the longer-term vision for the channel (boy is it exciting!!!).
Oh, and just to end with a bang, my pay check for the month of June came up to an insane £24,088.03.
Yeah... more than double last month. What the f*ck. But again... the majority of that is going right back into the business, nothing to do with me personally
I watched the premier and well done for the effort! Your skills have improved a lot!
I got two boys, 12 and 14 both play games (Fortinte, Valorant, CSGO etc)(I join them some times playing Valorant) and they are constantly on twitch as well as streaming. I think your audience is really towards business, money etc. as your voice demands attention, demands understanding, respect and focus! Twitch is more of an Entertainment platform than anything serious. We have visited the first TwitchCon and it was magical, but the audience there needs to be entertained rather than keeping them focused and giving them facts. My kids watch only silly videos which require no attention, they are short, but plenty. Look at TikTok, this will give you a clue, but your niche looks like Documentaries, serious matters!
This is at least my two cents!
Best wishes,
Pete
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