YouTube has sucked me in and spat me out, possibly more confused than ever.
I’ve been publishing videos on YouTube since 2017 but only made slow progress. Originally, I wanted to drive traffic to my website and sell my books with it. I’ve had some success, but it’s been steady with low volumes.
After joining this forum in September 21, I read the post “Figuring out YouTube” here. Following a great exchange with @Andy Black, I realised my videos weren’t good enough and I wanted to do better. My 28-day viewer figures had been falling from around 50k to about 34k. After improving the video quality it’s picked up to around 60k views in the past 28-days.
Although I’ve improved my video quality, I realised in the run-up to Christmas I want to do more. So, taking another great idea from Andy I’m going to use this thread to share my goal, progress, and more likely frustrations, on my YouTube adventure.
If this doesn’t sound like a large increase for YouTube, here’s some context. My viewing stats have been static/declining over the past few years despite my best efforts. My subscriber growth has also gone the same way.
Historically I’ve published 1 video a week and intend to keep to that schedule whilst continuing to improve the quality.
I’ve spent January looking through a hell of a lot of data in my YouTube stats and concluded:
Sorry if this is a long post but I want to set out the position to have something to look back on at the end of the year.
I’ll be posting updates and thoughts about my progress each month.
I’ve been publishing videos on YouTube since 2017 but only made slow progress. Originally, I wanted to drive traffic to my website and sell my books with it. I’ve had some success, but it’s been steady with low volumes.
After joining this forum in September 21, I read the post “Figuring out YouTube” here. Following a great exchange with @Andy Black, I realised my videos weren’t good enough and I wanted to do better. My 28-day viewer figures had been falling from around 50k to about 34k. After improving the video quality it’s picked up to around 60k views in the past 28-days.
Although I’ve improved my video quality, I realised in the run-up to Christmas I want to do more. So, taking another great idea from Andy I’m going to use this thread to share my goal, progress, and more likely frustrations, on my YouTube adventure.
Revised Goal for 2022
Rather than trying to drive a few new subscribers and sales each day, I want to significantly increase the number of views my channel achieves. I’m going to stick my neck out and shoot to quadruple the 28-day views by the end of 2022. If I hit 240k views on the channel in December, I’ll be delighted.If this doesn’t sound like a large increase for YouTube, here’s some context. My viewing stats have been static/declining over the past few years despite my best efforts. My subscriber growth has also gone the same way.
- 2018 +6.3k subs
- 2019 +6.4k subs
- 2020 +6.1k subs
- 2021 +4.9 subs
First Steps, January 2022
My videos are of the “How to” type in the photo editing niche. I’m going to continue with this rather than pivoting away because there is room for growth (I think). It’s also my area of expertise.Historically I’ve published 1 video a week and intend to keep to that schedule whilst continuing to improve the quality.
I’ve spent January looking through a hell of a lot of data in my YouTube stats and concluded:
- The improvements I made to video quality have translated to better viewing stats. More people are watching videos to completion. The viewer drop-off rate after 30-seconds has reduced. More people are clicking to watch my next recommended video.
- But my quality improvements are not translating into more views overall. Most of my views in the first 7 days come from existing subscribers. After that, there is a slow growth for some of the videos. I need to work on my Video Topics, Thumbnails, and Titles to get more clicks from new viewers.
- Approx. 25% of my channel views come from YouTube Search, 25% from External (of which Google is 80%) and 25% from Browse features. I used to get 30%-40% from YouTube suggested videos a couple of years back but that’s now dropped to around 12%.
Sorry if this is a long post but I want to set out the position to have something to look back on at the end of the year.
I’ll be posting updates and thoughts about my progress each month.
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum:
Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.