Hello everyone,
I have an old style youtube channel with 175k subscribers, 30M+ views. So I know one thing or two about the plateform. But no need to say that 80% of these knowledges are useless when it comes to shorts.
Anyway, I am trying to create from scratch a couple of shorts channels (like if the first one works well, I'll duplicate the concept with 2 or 3 additionals). I started 2 months ago. I had no real idea of content, mainly I tried to replicate trending videos. I gained a couple of subscribers and watch time but as you will see, this is not really good.
So far I posted 55 videos (started jun 29th), gained about 400 subscribers, 75 shares, 210k views.
So my analysis is deductive : since I achieve reasonably good results in terms of view rate and retention, the explanation for not passing the kill zone must be somewhere else. One thing I noticed recently on a video is that when it does progress in terms of view rate (which is not easy to spot because in youtube studio this metric is given at the present time, this is not a chart) youtube triggers the view booster. That's something I need to confirm but maybe someone has already encountered this phenomenon?
Also I noticed 2 tricks that have a positive impact on the performance of a video. The first one is a glitch from youtube so I won't explain here to avoid them patching it, the second one is part of the secret sauce of the content I am currently testing.
This is the type of chart I get after 1 or 2 days, which makes me happy because this is my original content and I reach the same kind of results than with my copycat videos. Don't get me wrong, I won't be surprise that someone already published the same kind of video I came up with, and it might be really popular ! But this time if it does exist out there it's pure coincidence, my creativity led me to this content.
Anyway as proud as I am to create original stuff, this doesn't meet my expectations, I am still not able to pass the 10k kill zone. So I do my best to keep working but sometimes I feel really sad that my efforts are not paying off. I am not even looking for millions of views and subscribers but just some noticeable progress.
I have an old style youtube channel with 175k subscribers, 30M+ views. So I know one thing or two about the plateform. But no need to say that 80% of these knowledges are useless when it comes to shorts.
Anyway, I am trying to create from scratch a couple of shorts channels (like if the first one works well, I'll duplicate the concept with 2 or 3 additionals). I started 2 months ago. I had no real idea of content, mainly I tried to replicate trending videos. I gained a couple of subscribers and watch time but as you will see, this is not really good.
So far I posted 55 videos (started jun 29th), gained about 400 subscribers, 75 shares, 210k views.
What I discovered
After posting many types of videos and analysing my stats I reach the conclusion that views rate and retention are definitely not the key metrics to focus on : From what I learnt, having 75-80% view rate and 80%+ retention rate is necessary but not enought to pass thought the 10k views kill zone. I think comments, but also shares and saves are the really important. Please correct me if I am wrong. So far the video with the best metrics has been killed at 14k views, with 70% view rate and 94% retention rate, but only 2 comments and 3 shares.So my analysis is deductive : since I achieve reasonably good results in terms of view rate and retention, the explanation for not passing the kill zone must be somewhere else. One thing I noticed recently on a video is that when it does progress in terms of view rate (which is not easy to spot because in youtube studio this metric is given at the present time, this is not a chart) youtube triggers the view booster. That's something I need to confirm but maybe someone has already encountered this phenomenon?
Also I noticed 2 tricks that have a positive impact on the performance of a video. The first one is a glitch from youtube so I won't explain here to avoid them patching it, the second one is part of the secret sauce of the content I am currently testing.
My current focus
Indeed since a couple of days, I feel like I have maybe found a good recipe. I am done playing the copy and paste game with successful shorts. Instead I took inspiration from 2 or 3 different concepts to create a new one, with my proper hashtag. Since I wanted to test this pretty fast, I posted 4 videos on this channel and 2 on a different one.This is the type of chart I get after 1 or 2 days, which makes me happy because this is my original content and I reach the same kind of results than with my copycat videos. Don't get me wrong, I won't be surprise that someone already published the same kind of video I came up with, and it might be really popular ! But this time if it does exist out there it's pure coincidence, my creativity led me to this content.
Anyway as proud as I am to create original stuff, this doesn't meet my expectations, I am still not able to pass the 10k kill zone. So I do my best to keep working but sometimes I feel really sad that my efforts are not paying off. I am not even looking for millions of views and subscribers but just some noticeable progress.
Conclusion of the post
That's the reason why I started this journey : sharing with you guys my analysis, discussing thoughts and also finding energy and motivation to not give up ! If you have questions on this topic I will be really pleased to give valuable answers.
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