Content vs Algorithm: Why Do Identical Channels Explode While Mine Stalls?

[metalgear01]

Hello guys,
I’ve been working with networks for many years, but YouTube’s algorithm keeps changing and makes things more and more complicated. On top of being a creator, you almost have to become a full-time analyst or tech geek to even keep up, and then deal with the crazy advantages older channels seem to have.


I have a lot of high-quality videos ready to post in my niche (travel). I’ve tested many approaches:

• I created a brand-new channel with a new email: none of the videos were pushed.
• I bought a channel that was grown organically, but it only had Shorts and most of its audience was from South America. I tried posting long-form videos in English there, but it didn’t really work. I ended up deleting those videos.
• I then went back to one of my older channels and started posting seriously: long videos and Shorts. I copied very viral Shorts and adapted them, used strong hooks, tested everything possible. Still, I’m stuck at around 1,500 views. The numbers are almost always the same, which makes it obvious this isn’t a content issue but purely algorithmic.

All my stats are green: retention above 200%, very little swiping. So no, it’s not that “the algorithm stopped pushing because of poor retention.” I’m convinced YouTube simply allocates a fixed number of views, and my channel isn’t in that group. I have dozens of examples of other channels posting the exact same videos, at the same time as me, and they explode : 2M subs in 20 Shorts. One guy I know even created a second channel, re-posted the exact same clips in a different order, and got the same results.


I’ve tested endless variations: different Shorts formats, with and without hashtags, with recommended music and without, copying my competitors’ style, everything. Still nothing. Sometimes one of my Shorts will hit 1K views in a few minutes, then completely die. This has been going on for six months.


I even used Microworkers for different jobs (searching my video, watching from social links, sharing, etc.) to push long videos into suggestions. Only one video ever picked up to 20K views.


So yes,content matters a lot, but luck plays a huge role too. Even having an old channel doesn’t guarantee anything.


What would you do in my situation? I know some people found success by buying a channel with a big organic subscriber base that was already “trusted” by the algorithm, and that seems to save a lot of time.

 

[Panther28]

The age of the cahnnel doesn't count. Its the quality/fun of the content. I seen new channels blow up thanks to their quality content. I never see any crap slideshow or crap ai cookie cutter nonsense, getting to the top of my feed thankfully. lol

As for all your methods. google probably now knows your a bad actor, you buying channels, using multiple channels for the same content. Buying likes, and views.

Either you take a break from youtube, or you really rethink your strategy. You need a consisntant 3 years minimum of weekly/2/monthly videos. They need to be engaging.

All the channels I followed to make my decisions on, (50+) have a few people that rose to the top thanks to this strategy, and have hundreds of thoundsns of subs (the worst performing of the top 20%)

 

[omi3oh1]

I’d focus on one channel, study what works in my niche, and double down on a unique style instead of chasing the algorithm.

 

[mcvobla]

The age of the cahnnel doesn't count. Its the quality/fun of the content. I seen new channels blow up thanks to their quality content. I never see any crap slideshow or crap ai cookie cutter nonsense, getting to the top of my feed thankfully. lol

As for all your methods. google probably now knows your a bad actor, you buying channels, using multiple channels for the same content. Buying likes, and views.

Either you take a break from youtube, or you really rethink your strategy. You need a consisntant 3 years minimum of weekly/2/monthly videos. They need to be engaging.

All the channels I followed to make my decisions on, (50+) have a few people that rose to the top thanks to this strategy, and have hundreds of thoundsns of subs (the worst performing of the top 20%)

3 years minimum? You can't be serious.

There are teams that FARM hundreds of monetized accounts with shorts, no proxies no nothing, all under a few brand accounts. Google doesn't care if you use multiple channels.

Niche, trends and mass appeal play the biggest role.

 

[ratemate]

Great advice from Panther28. I will just expand a little.

As we do not know your usages and it may be difficult. Google has decent detection, especially when a lot of info has been gathered. Though, the algo seems to be generous towards high quality content, you can be unlucky, but not to this degree.

Using another device and potentially another residential IP trying from scratch with something that is not attached to you may be favorable. Also, quality can mean a lot. There are even AI voice channel that are doing well simply because people still interact naturally with it due to being on the frontier of technology, news, etc.

 

[Builder Dave]

A very big component of exploding on any platform is luck. There can be 10,000 similar videos, but not all of them will go viral.

Additionally, some of the channels that explode are doing so not solely based on the algorithm and having the platform bring them views. For instance, they find a way to bring views to the platform from other sources based on self-promotion and that's something that the algorithms usually love. I've also seen many success stories that include some huge account sharing their content to a huge audience for some reason and that's what really started their exponential growth.

And there is another factor that one needs to always keep in mind as an option - your content might not be as good as you wish it is. You might think that your videos are just as good as the ones going viral, but it's hard to be sure as you are biased. Yours could actually be better, but they might as well be worse and the audience might actually like them less.

 

[Panther28]

3 years minimum? You can't be serious.

There are teams that FARM hundreds of monetized accounts with shorts, no proxies no nothing, all under a few brand accounts. Google doesn't care if you use multiple channels.

Niche, trends and mass appeal play the biggest role.

Yes your talking about finding shortcuts. I'm talking about guranteed results from the channels I studied and still watch in my niche. I never see any of these "Content farms" in my feed. I just get quality content from idnependant publishers, and a bucket load of hip hop! lol People like to think that becuase this is blackhatworld, there must be blackhat tricks to succedd at beating youtube, with second hand bad content. Fair enough, we're all allowed to wake up in the monring and blieve what we want. I believe that Google and YouTube have bigger and badder resources than any temporary workaround spammer, who never really builds a real content business. They are what I would call a "workaround" business. They look for workarounds and hacks, not actual work and assets. Go study 50-100 channels in your niche, and make a note, of how long they been publishing for, how many views they get per day etc, then study each of their videos from the first to the last. If your still looking for a "shortcut" after this, you just won't get it. I spent 2 weeks building the resources of my master spreadseet, and researching, before I commited 100% to my niche.

I'm a YouTube animator. My short cut is this:

(working on this right now)

I'm building a faster content asset portfolio of background chars i can place in my videos quicker. This is for all my back-facing bodies. I know the best channels in my niche are re-using assets, but by the time Christmas this year comes, I'll have more assets than all of them combined at my work rate.

This is a shortcut that involves "Work" although for many people on youtube, they jsut want to re-use the same stuff out there, and give it a 2% change fluff, and keep their work to 1 hour a day at most. lol these people and those buying views, shouldn't be on the platform. They are useless, and not creative.

I don't need fake ass subs or views. I'll go viral on my own skills thanks very much. Thats what youtube wants too. Give it what it wants, expect the best. Break the rules? You get the worst.

 

[BLGProductions]

Luck does play a role, but majorly it has to do with content, and content doesn't mean just getting nice retention and ctr, those matter a lot...however you need to also choose your niche strategically and see what kind of topics work in your niche, we have seen creators make hq thumbnails and great videos however the topics they choose are mostly something that people aren't interested in...and like the other members have mentioned, following a trend is a quick way to blow up, youtube will suggest your videos along with other videos that get 100k-millions of views...if your topics are similar.

Btw promotions on videos do work, way quicker than organically waiting for views, as long as your content is great and you get good quality services and know how to bot, there are tons of botting methods that work to trick the algo.

 

[mcvobla]

Yes your talking about finding shortcuts. I'm talking about guranteed results from the channels I studied and still watch in my niche. I never see any of these "Content farms" in my feed. I just get quality content from idnependant publishers, and a bucket load of hip hop! lol People like to think that becuase this is blackhatworld, there must be blackhat tricks to succedd at beating youtube, with second hand bad content. Fair enough, we're all allowed to wake up in the monring and blieve what we want. I believe that Google and YouTube have bigger and badder resources than any temporary workaround spammer, who never really builds a real content business. They are what I would call a "workaround" business. They look for workarounds and hacks, not actual work and assets. Go study 50-100 channels in your niche, and make a note, of how long they been publishing for, how many views they get per day etc, then study each of their videos from the first to the last. If your still looking for a "shortcut" after this, you just won't get it. I spent 2 weeks building the resources of my master spreadseet, and researching, before I commited 100% to my niche.

I'm a YouTube animator. My short cut is this:

View attachment 468317

(working on this right now)

I'm building a faster content asset portfolio of background chars i can place in my videos quicker. This is for all my back-facing bodies. I know the best channels in my niche are re-using assets, but by the time Christmas this year comes, I'll have more assets than all of them combined at my work rate.

This is a shortcut that involves "Work" although for many people on youtube, they jsut want to re-use the same stuff out there, and give it a 2% change fluff, and keep their work to 1 hour a day at most. lol these people and those buying views, shouldn't be on the platform. They are useless, and not creative.

I don't need fake ass subs or views. I'll go viral on my own skills thanks very much. Thats what youtube wants too. Give it what it wants, expect the best. Break the rules? You get the worst.

There is absolutely no way you don't see content from these content farms, you wouldn't even know it if you saw one especially cooking and gaming niches are very prevalent and hard to tell. There is absolutely nothing blackhat about content/niche/trend farming and there are no "tricks". Lets say you have a team of 5 people, 2-3 editors and 2-3 scriptwriters. At this point it is a job for all 5 of you, 8 hours a day, you can easily bang out 10-20 videos daily with a plan, and its not bad content at all. 100k engaged views per video is the lowest end for anyone with experience, thats somewhere around $150-$300 daily rev on the LOWEST end if no videos gets picked up by algo.

"any temporary workaround spammer" - what made you think a team farming 100 monetized accounts is in any way temporary or just a spammer? Just the cost of setting up 100 accounts would be around $45k

Besides I never mentioned buying subs or views, that is in fact pretty useless(there are ways to make it work, actual blackhat tho, no smm panel can offer this).