"retention is king" = bullshit

[Tribulations]

as a individual you can only concentrate on one thing.. either make trash content easily and concentrate on marketing and other stuff or concentrate on top class content making and in the mean time leave the other things like optimization and marketing... if you conquer both.. you got yourself a pewdiepie or vanossgaming or many other youtube channel ... even the one op mentioned above in his thread...

The thing is, I dont want to be famous, I like working behind the curtain, so animation was what I found... and about developing a cult, its just mostly kids, its so random, they go from video to video. Having a cult following is so rare. The channel I linked started the whole stickman trend. I didn't start a tend, I do content based on a trend, like most people on the other hand, because creating a 100% original trend is so difficult. It doesn't happen often. When i've tried to be more original/thought provoking I had garbage retention, because again, its mostly kids looking for entertainment, im stuck on that sort of audience, so I can't really get away with much, just keep making things based around what trends and roll the dice. I've noticed whenever someone in my trend makes a "question and and answers" or "1 million subs special" or "my new home" etc it barely picks views compared to the usual grind, which proves this type of audience doesn't care, they come to see the animation, and leave onto the next video irrespective of what channel they are watching. Developing a cult takes years of being exposed to your audience. Good luck becomig a pewdiepie or vanossgaming with millions doing the same thing.

On top of all this there's also the shadow of COPPA's hammer making you paranoid about what bullshit they come up with next to finally obliterate all of us and only leave the pewdiepies of the world keep making money.

 

[Ajeet Ghuman]

The thing is, I dont want to be famous, I like working behind the curtain, so animation was what I found... and about developing a cult, its just mostly kids, its so random, they go from video to video. Having a cult following is so rare. The channel I linked started the whole stickman trend. I didn't start a tend, I do content based on a trend, like most people on the other hand, because creating a 100% original trend is so difficult. It doesn't happen often. When i've tried to be more original/thought provoking I had garbage retention, because again, its mostly kids looking for entertainment, im stuck on that sort of audience, so I can't really get away with much, just keep making things based around what trends and roll the dice. I've noticed whenever someone in my trend makes a "question and and answers" or "1 million subs special" or "my new home" etc it barely picks views compared to the usual grind, which proves this type of audience doesn't care, they come to see the animation, and leave onto the next video irrespective of what channel they are watching. Developing a cult takes years of being exposed to your audience. Good luck becomig a pewdiepie or vanossgaming with millions doing the same thing.

On top of all this there's also the shadow of COPPA's hammer making you paranoid about what bullshit they come up with next to finally obliterate all of us and only leave the pewdiepies of the world keep making money.

I guess you made up your mind.. good luck with future.. and keep on hustling.. don't quit until everything gone to shit and not a single penny left to squeeze out....

 

[Tribulations]

I guess you made up your mind.. good luck with future.. and keep on hustling.. don't quit until everything gone to shit and not a single penny left to squeeze out....

What else do you suggest? I appreciate all input but "just become a pewdiepie/vanossgaming bro" is not too realistic tbh. Check animation channels, it's a tiny minority that get any following outside of Youtube. To put in perspective, lets look at the king of the stickman niche animation thing that I linked before:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbKWv2x9t6u8yZoB3KcPtnw
https://www.patreon.com/alanbecker

This guy has 11 million followers on youtube and millions of views per video so they arent dead subs, and he makes 400 a month from patreon. Just scale this down to the average animation channel and you'll see patreon is impossible. And this guy is lucky to get some following outside of Youtube, but most don't. Unless you don't create some original thing, an original character that goes viral or something... then you are stuck.

Im gonna keep milking it, so far it still pays well, but im so fucking paranoid about it, at any given time the traffic can plummet, and I have no job experience or anything, this is my only source of income, im saving all of my money just in case. This is why I also want to think about alternative sources of income, but I can't do both, there's not enough time. If im not animating, there's no new video coming = channel is at risk. And starting from scratching without a plan trying to monetize something else, spend an unspecified amount of time trying to even get monetization by Google to not even know if it will get you any money while you have a channel that is monetized its pretty harsh. So yeah, I have to decide between doing this or slow down download schelude (even more) and work on whatever the fuck else I could come up with to make money online, and I have no idea what that could be. Just to think starting with 0 subs and no monetization and spend months getting watchtime and 4k followers to attempt to get monetization is pretty brutal. And as far as outside youtube, I dont know how make webpages or anything.

 

[Ajeet Ghuman]

What else do you suggest? I appreciate all input but "just become a pewdiepie/vanossgaming bro" is not too realistic tbh. Check animation channels, it's a tiny minority that get any following outside of Youtube. To put in perspective, lets look at the king of the stickman niche animation thing that I linked before:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbKWv2x9t6u8yZoB3KcPtnw
https://www.patreon.com/alanbecker

This guy has 11 million followers on youtube and millions of views per video so they arent dead subs, and he makes 400 a month from patreon. Just scale this down to the average animation channel and you'll see patreon is impossible. And this guy is lucky to get some following outside of Youtube, but most don't. Unless you don't create some original thing, an original character that goes viral or something... then you are stuck.

Im gonna keep milking it, so far it still pays well, but im so fucking paranoid about it, at any given time the traffic can plummet, and I have no job experience or anything, this is my only source of income, im saving all of my money just in case. This is why I also want to think about alternative sources of income, but I can't do both, there's not enough time. If im not animating, there's no new video coming = channel is at risk. And starting from scratching without a plan trying to monetize something else, spend an unspecified amount of time trying to even get monetization by Google to not even know if it will get you any money while you have a channel that is monetized its pretty harsh. So yeah, I have to decide between doing this or slow down download schelude (even more) and work on whatever the fuck else I could come up with to make money online, and I have no idea what that could be. Just to think starting with 0 subs and no monetization and spend months getting watchtime and 4k followers to attempt to get monetization is pretty brutal. And as far as outside youtube, I dont know how make webpages or anything.

i would say my friend you just realise what people don't .. f people i didn't realize when i had million of views and 300$ paycheck from adsense was coming (in my country it still a lot of money)... so now you realize it and still nothing wrong happened.. so i would recommend you few things.. on video side.. you said you keep going on trending videos.. but i would say make some ever green videos too .. which could be anything.. like tutorials of some specific motion you put in the animation or anything.. think about it.. and on other side if you think you share your skill.. then try to make few courses on small skills related to animation.. and as per my knowldege animation is a very broad area speaking in tools.. i mainly use illustrator and after effect.. so you can put courses on udemy and also side by side make a website and put your effort on it.. think like this.. you got a skill .. ( although i didn't see your video) but you might have a amazing skill (because its animation and its pretty lengthy and hard skill to learn) .. so you can distribute your skill in many different form .. and also another important thing keep on learning new things in it.. and then sell them the same way too.. as every expert IM will tell you after a century work experince never put all your eggs in one basket.. make two three or even four ways of revenue generation for yourself.. so if one shutdown .. like you so paranoid of your youtube channel .. other two or three will be keeping up the bills paid.. don't give on building audience thing.. for that you need to find your style and niche in animation and trend will come out automatically.. trends does not get set by a creator but by public.. when they love it .. it equals to trend... good luck B)

 

[Tribulations]

i would say my friend you just realise what people don't .. f people i didn't realize when i had million of views and 300$ paycheck from adsense was coming (in my country it still a lot of money)... so now you realize it and still nothing wrong happened.. so i would recommend you few things.. on video side.. you said you keep going on trending videos.. but i would say make some ever green videos too .. which could be anything.. like tutorials of some specific motion you put in the animation or anything.. think about it.. and on other side if you think you share your skill.. then try to make few courses on small skills related to animation.. and as per my knowldege animation is a very broad area speaking in tools.. i mainly use illustrator and after effect.. so you can put courses on udemy and also side by side make a website and put your effort on it.. think like this.. you got a skill .. ( although i didn't see your video) but you might have a amazing skill (because its animation and its pretty lengthy and hard skill to learn) .. so you can distribute your skill in many different form .. and also another important thing keep on learning new things in it.. and then sell them the same way too.. as every expert IM will tell you after a century work experince never put all your eggs in one basket.. make two three or even four ways of revenue generation for yourself.. so if one shutdown .. like you so paranoid of your youtube channel .. other two or three will be keeping up the bills paid.. don't give on building audience thing.. for that you need to find your style and niche in animation and trend will come out automatically.. trends does not get set by a creator but by public.. when they love it .. it equals to trend... good luck B)

Im not that skilled, I use a shitty niche software, but I get the job done, I mean its not like people are geniuses in this niche, but like I said, content outside of that niche doesnt get views. Think about it: I have an audience of basically kids from random countries. So if I wanted to create a tutorial series... problem 1: In which language would it be? audience countries its all over the place. Then, problem 2: Its mostly kids, I doubt they have the attention spam for it. Some may, some may don't. What's clear is, they aren't going to pay for it. The niche im at is kinda shunned upon by proper animators. Think the gacha niche thing, something similar, so there's probably not much of a market there. The creator of the software im using struggles to find time to develop it because it doesn't pay. The people making the money here is the people that manage to rank the videos and get adsense out of it. To put perspective: The biggest channel on this niche has like 5 million subs, and still depends on adsense too. And I just refuse to put my face all over the internet trying to get a following out of it... its not my thing, and chances are no one gives a f*ck anyway given the niche. Then there's also the problem of uploading videos that don't do as well as the others because they are different (like a tutorial) and im paranoid this can damage the overall rating of the channel and thus further ranking of other videos. Like I said, I already tried an animation with english dialog taken from a movie once, and it had like, something ridiculous for retention, like 45 seconds average, when I usually do around 5:00 to 7:00 average watchtime for videos. That video was a disaster and I made it private. So what im saying is, if I do a tutorial in english, I don't think it's going to work. So perhaps this could be only for udemy or something, but like I said, it's a pretty lame software, no serious animator uses this and I assume that is the people that is going to spend any money on things.

 

[Quality1]

I am having the same issues as you @Tribulations - the various "metrics" are meaningless for my channel.
CTR, watch time, subs, etc, doesn't matter what I do, I am never getting suggested views.

It's led to the same paranoid thinking you describe. I intentionally kept my YT account clean. No paid views, no bots, no nonsense.
So did I watch a blacklisted video? Do I follow a blacklisted channel? Have I unwittingly committed an infraction and blacklisted myself?
I reached out to YTs creator support and got only vague, unhelpful copy/paste responses.

My content is on par or better than what's currently being suggested by YTs algorithm, so I hold out hope that I'll one day break through. But god damn is it demoralizing.

 

[Tribulations]

I am having the same issues as you @Tribulations - the various "metrics" are meaningless for my channel.
CTR, watch time, subs, etc, doesn't matter what I do, I am never getting suggested views.

It's led to the same paranoid thinking you describe. I intentionally kept my YT account clean. No paid views, no bots, no nonsense.
So did I watch a blacklisted video? Do I follow a blacklisted channel? Have I unwittingly committed an infraction and blacklisted myself?
I reached out to YTs creator support and got only vague, unhelpful copy/paste responses.

My content is on par or better than what's currently being suggested by YTs algorithm, so I hold out hope that I'll one day break through. But god damn is it demoralizing.

What is your niche? How many videos do you have/subs/best performing video.. etc

What are your stats in terms of CTR, watchtime, retention...

Im trying to see patterns, but looking at my own videos seems pretty random. We'll see how the next one does. But I have nightmares of losing my suggested traffic up to a point where the channel starts losing subs because the traffic coming is not enough to stop the inevitable hemorrhage of subs that you always have as a bigger channel. This happened to me once when I only had one video being suggested and it was depressing as fuck.

 

[Legiton]

What is your niche? How many videos do you have/subs/best performing video.. etc

What are your stats in terms of CTR, watchtime, retention...

Im trying to see patterns, but looking at my own videos seems pretty random. We'll see how the next one does. But I have nightmares of losing my suggested traffic up to a point where the channel starts losing subs because the traffic coming is not enough to stop the inevitable hemorrhage of subs that you always have as a bigger channel. This happened to me once when I only had one video being suggested and it was depressing as fuck.

Having the same problem with a channel for a couple of months. It just stopped getting in suggested like it used to do before. Rn it's normal to have ~10% from suggested when few months back it was 40-70+ easily. Tried to experiment with CTR, Retention, Watch time. And without any success. Longer videos - little bit more views but roughly saying it's the same, big CTR - a little bit more views but not like it's crazy, good retention - same views. Really don't get it. Gonna test more by asking people to like, comment and subscribe more. But for now I think it's because of competition channels. I'm doing compilations and there is few channels who are in the same niche as I am and they are doing compilations too. But my theory is because I stopped posting videos for 2 months before, the competitor got ahead of me in terms of general watch time on his channel and now instead of me, YT suggests videos from the channel that generated good views already, so it's kind of logical why YT stopped recommending my channel. BUT at the same time, I'm looking at other niches and there's so many competitive channels but they are all getting good views so it makes me think that there's other problem.

 

[Ajeet Ghuman]

Im not that skilled, I use a shitty niche software, but I get the job done, I mean its not like people are geniuses in this niche, but like I said, content outside of that niche doesnt get views. Think about it: I have an audience of basically kids from random countries. So if I wanted to create a tutorial series... problem 1: In which language would it be? audience countries its all over the place. Then, problem 2: Its mostly kids, I doubt they have the attention spam for it. Some may, some may don't. What's clear is, they aren't going to pay for it. The niche im at is kinda shunned upon by proper animators. Think the gacha niche thing, something similar, so there's probably not much of a market there. The creator of the software im using struggles to find time to develop it because it doesn't pay. The people making the money here is the people that manage to rank the videos and get adsense out of it. To put perspective: The biggest channel on this niche has like 5 million subs, and still depends on adsense too. And I just refuse to put my face all over the internet trying to get a following out of it... its not my thing, and chances are no one gives a f*ck anyway given the niche. Then there's also the problem of uploading videos that don't do as well as the others because they are different (like a tutorial) and im paranoid this can damage the overall rating of the channel and thus further ranking of other videos. Like I said, I already tried an animation with english dialog taken from a movie once, and it had like, something ridiculous for retention, like 45 seconds average, when I usually do around 5:00 to 7:00 average watchtime for videos. That video was a disaster and I made it private. So what im saying is, if I do a tutorial in english, I don't think it's going to work. So perhaps this could be only for udemy or something, but like I said, it's a pretty lame software, no serious animator uses this and I assume that is the people that is going to spend any money on things.

i have sent you a PM ... check it out let's have conversation there ...

 

[Tribulations]

You reached 1kk subscribers only because YouTube recommended you. With your tight head that only wants money but can't analyze - life will be difficult.

You only found out a month ago that you have a channel analyst?
Never thought about why some videos get more than others? Although it may be very similar videos.
Show me your thumbnail, I'm sure it's crap. Make a thumbnail that isn't on the channel, so that we understand your level.

Take out your children's diary and write it down. YouTube doesn't give a fuck about your retention if your ctr is below the floor. Even if it will be 120%
If you have subscribers in minus on this video, you can forget about the views.
1. ctr 2. retention + subs.

I have a bunch of examples where the retention is 10%, and the video is 10+ minutes long. Due to the high ctr, it brings me money for years and has almost 14kk views.

*My English is as bad as your ability to think.

Contrary to what this know-it-all says, i've had better CTR and better retention in videos that do worse than others with worse CTR and worse retention.

In fact, lower CTR in viral videos seems a constant, because it gets shown to massive amounts of people, so the CTR is not as good as other videos, yet somehow it still gets keep getting recommended.

My previous video did average to pretty bad compared to others, and my latest did great. Nothing too evident as to why looking at statistics in relation to other videos of my own.

My conclusion and the best one unless proven wrong with data is that CTR and retention+watchtime matter, but you are basically competing against other similar videos' CTR, watchtime, retention, and even at subniche levels. Basically, you CAN'T know what the fuck you are competing against because you can't see other people's data obviously. So it's really a crapshot. You can look at your own data all day, but unless you could hack on the videos that are doing great and compare your stats to them, you can't extract much useful information from comparing to your own videos, because once again, you are competing constantly against unknown statistics. Then on top of this, im sure there is some sort of authority stats which give you automatically more impressions based on previous performance, so if you get on an unlucky video streak you are stuck on the hellhole of not getting recommended until one video lucks out again and you get traction again hopefully.

There is a lot more randomness in this game than a lot of other people would like to admit because they would look less smart. The reality of the situation is that all these channels that do great aren't some bright statistic readers.